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CENTENNIAL ADDRESS 

By 
Joseph Cook 

Ticonderoga, 1 764- 1 864 



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TiCONDEROGA HISTORICAL SOCIETY 

Ticonderoga, N. Y. 



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Copyright 1909 by 

TiCONDEROGA HISTORICAL SoCIETY 



A II rights reserved 



PBESS OF 

Bbandow Pbinting Company 
Albant, N. Y. 



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TABLE OF CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Publisher's Note 9 

Prefatory Note by Mrs. Joseph Cook il 

Introduction by Charles William Burrows 15 

Centennial Address by Joseph Cook 19 

Sub-Titles 

Looking Backward and Forward 21 

Chief Events in Military History of Ticonderoga 26 

Champlain's Discovery of the Lake 31 

Causes of the French and Indian War 36 

Battle of Lake George 44 

Building of Fort Ticonderoga 51 

Massacre at Fort William Henry 54 

Battle of Ticonderoga 59 

Montcalm's Preparations for the Attack 63 

Abercrombie's Approach 66 

Eve of the Battle 75 

Day of Battle, July 8, 1758 78 

Retreat of Abercrombie's Army 85 

Capture of Fort by Amherst, 1759 87 

Partition of Ticonderoga Lands 8g 

Grants of Land issued by George the Third 98 

Subsequent Attacks on Fort Ticonderoga 102 

Ticonderoga's Part in Battle of Plattsburgh, 1814 105 

Ticonderoga in the Civil War 106 



ILLUSTRATIONS 

Lieut.-General Louis Joseph Marquis de Montcalm- 

GozoN de Saint-Veran Frontispiece '^ 

Made from copy of the original portrait in the possession of the 
present Marquis of Montcalm. By courtesy of Mr. Charles William 
Burrows of the Burrows Brothers Company, of Cleveland, Ohio, 
Publishers of "Avery's History of the United States, and Its People." 

Joseph Cook, at nineteen years of age. . . .Opposite page 19 '^ 

From a daguerreotype made in 1857, when a student at Phillips 
Academy, Andover, Massachusetts. 
By courtesy of Mrs. Joseph Cook. 

Father Isaac Jogues Opposite page 33 / 

From imaginative portrait by McNab. By courtesy of Mr. Charles 
William Burrows. 

Narrows of Lake George Opposite page 44 ^ 

From "Lake George Poems" by Joseph Cook. 

Major Robert Rogers, the Ranger Opposite page 53 '^ 

From portrait loaned by Mr. David Williams, owner of Rogers 
Rock, and of Joseph Cook's Memorial Acre, on Movmt Defiance, 
the location of Burgoyne's fortifications on that mountain in 1777 
in his investment of Fort Ticonderoga, which compelled the evacua- 
tion of the Fort. Mr. Cook planned to have located on this moun- 
tain top a memorial to the military heroes of Ticonderoga. 

Major Israel Putnam Opposite page 58 / 

From a pencil copy by Miss Hall of Colonel John Trumbtill's original 
pencil sketch from life made in 1780, in possession of Putnam 
Phalanx, Hartford, Connecticut. We give below part of a letter 
from Benjamin Silliman, Architect, who was a grandson of the 
Prof. Silliman mentioned therein, written to the Putnam Phalanx: 

"The pencil portrait of Israel Putnam, purchased by the Putnam 
Phalanx, at the Trumbull sale in Philadelphia, Dec. 17th., 1896, 
wasjpart of a collection of Prof. B. Silliman, Jr., of Yale College, 
who was the executor of the estate of Colonel John Trumbull, 
the artist who made this sketch from life some time between 1780 
and 1785. It was made for the purpose of incorporating the like- 
ness of Putnam in Trumbull's painting of the Battle of Bunker Hill. 

"This sketch was never out of the possession of the Silliman 
family but descended from father to son vintil sold as above." 



8 Illustrations 

Rogers Slide, near which point the detachment of French 
troops were stationed, which later killed Lord Howe, 
near Trout Brook Opposite page 6i 

From "Lake George Poems" by Joseph Cook. 

George Augustus, Lord Howe Opposite page 68 

From a platinum print, in the possession of the Ticonderoga His- 
torical Society, of an oil painting made by Jennie Brownscomb. 

Chevalier de Levis Opposite page 80 

From private photograph of painting owned by Count L^vis Mirepoix. 
By courtesy of Mr. Charles William Burrows. 

General Jeffrey Amherst Opposite page 87 

From Collection of Mr. Charles William Burrows. 

Ruins of Fort Ticonderoga Opposite page 90 

From an engraving made from an oil painting by T. Cole, pub- 
lished February 15, 1831, loaned by Mr. S. H. P. Pell, owner of 
Fort Ticonderoga. 

Statue of Ethan Allen demanding the surrender of Fort 

Ticonderoga of Colonel de La Place "In the Name of 

the Great Jehovah and the Continental Congress." 

Opposite page 96 

From plate loaned by Mr. Walter D. Gregory, President of Travel 
Magazine, New York City. 

General Arthur St, Clair, Commander American Troops, 
Fort Ticonderoga, at the time of Burgoyne's invest- 
ment Opposite page 102 

From portrait loaned by Mr. Charles William Burrows. 

General John Burgoyne Opposite page 103 

From original portrait, painted by Thomas Hudson in 1759, by 
courtesy of Mr. Charles William Burrows. 

The Ruins of Fort Ticonderoga Opposite page 108 

September second, nineteen hundred and eight. One of the last 
photographs made of the old Fortress prior to the beginning of 
the work of restoration. 

From original photograph in possession of the Ticonderoga His- 
torical Society. 



PUBLISHER'S NOTE 

IN presenting to the public this Historical Address 
from a hitherto unpublished manuscript of 
Joseph Cook, we wish to make acknowledgment 
of the many courtesies extended our Society in con- 
nection with this matter, and of our sincere apprecia- 
tion of them. 

Our indebtedness to Mrs. Joseph Cook for her 
gracious permission to publish this gem and her kind- 
ness in editing the same is especially acknowledged, 
and our appreciation of the aid of Mrs. Sara E. 
Kinney, for fourteen years regent Connecticut D. A. R. 
and now Regent Emeritus for life, in securing from 
the Putnam Phalanx of Hartford, the favor of per- 
mitting the publication of Colonel John Trumbull's 
pencil sketch of Major Israel Putnam. 

.We would also extend our thanks to Mr. Charles 
William Burrows for numerous courtesies received 
at his hands and especially express our sense of deep 
obligation for his generous aid in helping us to illus- 
trative material and in writing the introduction to 
this book. 

Our thanks are due to Mr. Victor Hugo Paltsits, 
State Historian, for helpful suggestions and for his 
review from early proof sheets of this address. 



lo Publisher's Note 

We are also indebted to Mr. Horace A. Moses of 
Mitteneague, for his aid which made possible the 
character of the paper used herein. 

We would express our sincere appreciation of the 
kindness shown our society in the matter of this 
publication by Mr. David Williams, of Rogers Rock; 
Mr. Stephen H. P. Pell, of Fort Ticonderoga, Mr. 
Walter D. Gregory of New York, for portraits loaned, 
and to the many other friends of our society whose 
interest, encouragement and aid have been most 
helpful. 

The editing of the original draft of this address 
has been a matter of no small labor and any errors 
that may have crept into the text of this book may 
be attributed to the very illegible condition of the 
manuscript, written so many years ago. 

Ticonderoga Historical Society^ 
By William A. E. Cummings, M. D., 

President. 
June Fourteenth, 
Nineteen Hundred and Nine. 



PREFATORY NOTE 

WHEN Joseph Cook was nineteen years of age 
he conceived the idea of a series of Home 
Sketches of each town in Essex county, 
N. Y., and this proposition was printed in the North- 
ern Standard, September 3, 1857. He suggested that 
some competent person in each of the eighteen towns 
of the county should " carefully, intelligently, and ably 
answer " the four questions concerning the particular 
town under consideration. " i. What is it? 2. What 
it does? 3. What it enjoys? 4. What it needs?" 

This Joseph Cook himself proposed to do with his 
own historic town of Ticonderoga and the little 
brochure of 136 pages was printed by W. Lansing & 
Son, Keeseville, N. Y., 1858. 

The young student, keenly interested and enthusi- 
astic in the great historic events of the town of his 
birth, spent a vacation in the summer of 1857 collect- 
ing data under the four divisions previously mentioned. 

He searched libraries for historic facts. He ante- 
dated the newspaper reporter of the present day and 
became an interviewer of the original settlers. He 
" canvassed the town with pencil and portfolio, ques- 
tioned and cross-questioned individuals competent as 
witnesses, desired every man to speak as though on 
the stand under oath, took testimonies from parties 



12 Prefatory Note 

interested and uninterested concerning the same facts, 
recorded personal observations, obtained access to pri- 
vate papers, letters, notes, deeds, ledgers and other 
records ; and spared no time or pains to secure for 
every statement sufficient proof for its confirmation 
even by the rules of legal evidence." 

This pamphlet, now out of print and a treasured 
possession only in the oldest families of the town, is 
considered an authoritative presentation of the Ticon- 
deroga of 1858 and has been largely quoted from in 
more recent publications. Some twenty pages have 
been incorporated in the pamphlet entitled " Historical 
Ticonderoga." 

So much has been said of the local history of 
1858 to account for the Centennial Oration of 1864. 

July 25, 1864, was the hundredth anniversary of the 
issuing of the first grant of lands in Ticonderoga 
resulting in permanent settlement. The deed was 
given by King George III to Lieutenant John Stough- 
ton, a British officer in the French and Indian War, 
who settled at Ticonderoga and whose remains lie 
buried near the east side of the Rapids at the outlet 
of Lake George. 

The Centennial celebration took place at the old 
French lines on the fort grounds and a detailed ac- 
count of the occasion was published in the Essex 
County Republican, Keeseville, N. Y., August 11, 
1864. The Ticonderoga Sentinel came into existence 
some years later. 



Prefatory Note 13 

The chief literary exercises were an historical poem 
by Clayton H. DeLano and the Centennial address 
by Joseph Cook. It is the full text of this address, 
found in the author's manuscript, used on that occa- 
sion, which is now published by the Historical Society 
of Ticonderoga on this Tercentenary anniversary. 

When it was prepared, six years after the publica- 
tion of " Home Sketches," Joseph Cook had intended 
to publish an enlarged edition of his earlier work 
which would be enriched by his more elaborate re- 
searches along historical lines. It must be remem- 
bered that Parkman's histories had not appeared at 
that date and the detailed account of the battle between 
Abercrombie and Montcalm was the result of Mr. 
Cook's own painstaking investigations. 

Strenuous life as a student at Yale and Harvard 
and the German universities, foreign travel and public 
work gave Mr. Cook no leisure in which to bring out 
a second edition of the early town history and there- 
fore, for the first time since these words were uttered 
in July, 1864 — forty-five years ago — we are permitted 
to see them in print. The youthful orator and the 
majority of the eager, alert, enthusiastic audience, 
gathered to celebrate Ticonderoga's first Centennial 
on the historic Fort grounds, having joined the great 
company of those who were the actors in the scenes 
here described. 

Georgiana Hemingway Cook. 



INTRODUCTION 

"Bells of the Past, whose long-forgotten music 
Still fills the wide expanse, 
Tingeing the sober twilight of the Present 

With color of romance! 
I hear your call, and see the sun descending 
On rock and wave and sand." 

— Francis Bret Harte. 

CONSTRUCTING the vesture of a thought is a 
process of importance but uttering thoughts so 
grand and true that they wear their word- 
vestments with an air of dignity and comfort is vastly 
more important 

The establishment of a civil entity on the shores of 
Lake Champlain, at Ticonderoga, occurred on July 
25, 1764, when a retired British officer was awarded 
a claim there. This political, as distinguished from 
military, foundation changed the old, picturesque name 
of Carillon (Chime of Bells) back to the still earUer 
Indian title of Ticonderoga. The speaker at the cere- 
monies attendant upon the one hundredth anniversary 
of this foundation was a gifted native of the region, 
Joseph Cook. In those earlier days, when Ticonder- 
oga was Carillon and beautiful Lake George was Lac 
Saint Sacrement, a title rendered appropriate by the 
devoted Jesuit Father Jogues, who passed that way to 
his martyrdom, the coureur de hois, the fur trader 
from the lower Saint Lawrence watched with the som- 



1 6 Introduction 

ber Jesuit the struggle for mastery between the French, 
under their leaders, fresh from the palace of Louis 
on the one hand, and the rugged riflemen of New 
England, and the brilliant red-coat soldiers of Old 
England on the other, for control of this gateway 
from North to South. And when the Lilies of 
France were prostrated in the mire by the successes of 
Wolfe and his associates, even then the strategic im- 
portance conferred by nature upon this avenue was 
not lost. It was fortunate for history, therefore, that 
such a speaker was selected for the occasion referred 
to as Joseph Cook. 

Mr. Cook's orations were always of a noble type. 
So flexible were the movements of his mind amid the 
grandly accumulated words that made the vestments 
of his thought-forms that there was a chance of failure 
to apprehend at first hearing the wonderful breadth 
and depth of the knowledge that underlay the words 
in which he clothed his sentences. But a just appre- 
ciation was never long delayed. So artistically and 
yet so naturally did he pile phrase upon phrase that 
the climax, the completed whole of his argument, was 
sure to reveal itself in symmetry. The moral lessons 
to be drawn from history were also indicated with not 
less certainty and definiteness than was evident in his 
literary picturing. 

In speaking of another address of his, that on 
Ultimate America, delivered twenty years later at one 
of Henry C. Bowen's famous celebrations at Wood- 



Introduction 17 

stock, Connecticut, on the Fourth of July, 1884, a 
writer says : '' The facile expressions which others 
have achieved at the expense of greatest pains he seems 
to have had under natural compulsion." Mr. Cook 
both knew his subject intimately and in addition was 
a speaker possessed of inimitable charm. First, he 
was deeply saturated with the matter of his discourse, 
then, so fully master of the manner of marshalling his 
troops of words that an audience was held completely 
under command by his eloquence and swayed like the 
leaves on the trees of the noble forests formerly con- 
stituting the scenic background to the historical picture 
of Ticonderoga. 

When I remember all this I feel that it behooves 
me to ask, " Who am I, a mere publishing hewer ot 
stone in the quarries of historical granite that consti- 
tutes the literary mountains of this region, that I 
should be honored with a request to write this intro- 
duction ? " 

I ask you to listen to the inspiring " chimes-of-the 
bells " which he rang so musically amidst the very 
ruins which still reverberate with memories of the 
melody of his voice. May this three hundredth anni- 
versary of the discovery by Champlain at the North 
and by Hendrik Hudson at the South of this natural 
gateway of both warfare and commerce be so su- 
premely fortunate as to have among the speakers at 
its various functions at least one orator who can cause 
the bells of old ''Carillon'' to ring out with as bold 



i8 Introduction 

and as free an intonation as that which Joseph Cook 
made them assume! May our patriotism be set to 
as high a pitch as was his and may the willing note 
of reverence for the past and high hope and aspira- 
tion for a noble future be as deeply inspired once more 
as they were by his pregnant words. 

Charles William Burrows, 

Cleveland. 



CENTENNIAL ADDRESS 

By Joseph Cook 

IF, from the trenches beneath our feet, the forms 
that fell upon this spot in battle could be startled 
once more to life, the numbers of this audience 
would be doubled. Let none of us, therefore, imagine 
that the visible score of hundreds present to-day are 
the only persons here. I know not but that, from the 
eternal spaces above our heads, they who passed from 
earth in the agony of battle look down upon this scene 
and recall with us the memory of one hundred 
years ago. 

They were earnest men. It becomes us to listen 
with earnestness to their deeds. 

Two hundred years Ticonderoga was the theatre of 
war; for one hundred years it has been gathering to 
itself the arts of peace. 

The ceremonies, my friends, with which you greet 
this day symbolize that long, ripe history. Iroquois, 
Huron, and Adirondack in the sixteenth century; 
Abercrombie and Montcalm in 1758; Ethan Allen and 
La Place in 1775; Burgoyne and St. Clair in 1777; 
figures that move conspicuous in the former period: 
John Stoughton, that worthy British Lieutenant, to 
whom one hundred years ago to-day, was issued the 
first grant of lands in Ticonderoga ever made to any 
English Colonist and resulting in permanent settle- 



20 Centennial Address 

ment of the locality; and Samuel Deall, the zealous 
and liberal minded merchant of New York, his asso- 
ciate, and the pioneer of improvements here which 
his life was not prolonged to see, who begin the 
latter period. 

The original forest, indeed is not here ; endless virgin 
boughs upon granite hills, the freshness of the infi- 
nite woods. 

On the shore yonder Champlain does not stand with 
leveled arquebus, beginning, in the first skirmish with 
the frightened Iroquois, the French career here, by an 
act of injustice prophetic of its end. No once familiar 
Canadian boatman's song reaches us from this adja- 
cent outlet of Lake George; nor sound of French 
mattocks, of soldiers' jests, from the first rude earth 
works of Carillon. 

These bright lakes, flashing virgin once on the un- 
broken emerald of the northern solitudes, are vexed 
now by many keels. 

But in your procession, so far as historical panto- 
mime can present him, the Iroquois walks again. The 
flags of France and England are crossed once more, 
but now in peace, upon the very field to which they 
once led carnage. The French and English soldier 
and the American provincial ranger, move here again, 
erect as if from their graves beneath these hallowed 
sods, they had been startled to life by the old martial 
reveille. The pioneer with axe and hound treads his 
old paths. The riding dress of our grandmothers and 



TiCONDEROGA 21 

the rude conveyance of the pioneer days, contrast with 
their modern counterparts, and almost bring back the 
social moods and sunlight of one hundred years ago. 
In your Industrial Car the productions of past and 
present industry lock hands, whispering to each other 
strange reminiscences, and imitations, prophetic and 
devout of progress breathed through them and through 
the world. Honored age and happy youth gather side 
by side. A broad throng of middle-aged, of neighbors 
and friends and of welcome guests poured out from 
villages and hillsides, from farms and headlands, re- 
call by the very mosaic of our actual life, the past of 
which the present is but the effect, and so greet in the 
opening of the new century the whole course and the 
present fruitage of the old. 

And yet, my friends, in all this generous burden of 
reminiscences, in all this natural and lawful outgush 
of festive feeling, we do not find the deepest thought 
of the hour, a thought that must not lie unuttered. It 
is a day of welcome. It is a day of devout exultation 
and jubilee. Let that feeling have full course; let it 
sway us as a wave of the unseen spiritual sea, meeting 
us here and lifting us to both gladness and strength. 

LOOKING BACKWARD AND FORWARD 

But, to-day, with the whole history of the last hun- 
dred years gathered here visibly, as it were, in the 
air and moving, echoing and resounding through these 



22 Centennial Address 

mountain passes; the sights and sounds of a century 
returned to memory and imagination all at once, — 
Champlain's boat coasting warily among the water 
lilies in 1609; Iroquois crouching in ambush with 
poisoned arrow drawn ; Adirondack or Huron girdled 
with scalps from the traditional battle ground of 
Cheonderoga ; Montcalm, writing brilliant despatches ; 
Howe falling, virtuous, young and brave, upon the 
forest leaves on the ridge beyond the outlet of Trout 
Brook; Abercrombie at the Saw Mills ordering his 
men forward at the distant French Lines ; Allen in the 
grey morning twilight with drawn sword at La Place's 
door; Burgoyne's Cross of St. George among the 
pines of Mount Defiance astonishing the American 
garrison; St. Clair moving in the July midnight, in 
retreat over the bridge across Champlain, his store 
house burning on Mount Independence ; barges unload- 
ing at the commencement of the old camping place 
between the lakes ; cattle lowing, landed in forest soli- 
tudes unaccustomed to the sound ; pioneers with rifle 
and axe seeking sites for dwellings ; trees falling before 
the stroke of brown arms, the sunlight let in upon the 
earth ; hunters signalling to their hounds on the deer 
ways ; fallows smoking with the clearing day, or bur- 
dened with their first crops ; log cabins in small garden 
patches in summer or in winter banked with snow and 
topped with curling smoke; flaxen heads at rude 
schools ; the lumberman at his rattling log-chains 
before dawn ; hamlets gathering streets about mill sites 



TiCONDEROGA 23 

engulfed in lumber ; forest openings edging across the 
valleys and up the mountain sides; sprucer schools, 
first cottages, gathering villages, young manufactories, 
present spires ; and with the whole history of the next 
hundred years standing to the eye of inference and 
prophecy in shadowy forms beyond, farms blushing 
with the bloom of a richer culture ; mines deepened but 
not exhausted; factories in stories and in streets; 
schools rich in cabinets and libraries and endowments ; 
social circles more cultivated ; spires above larger con- 
gregations of a more fervent and redemptive spiritual 
life; society saturated in all its pores with the added 
experience of one hundred years with all these Pres- 
ences crowding upon our memory, there is one over- 
awing and irrepressible thought deserving more atten- 
tion than them all. 

One hundred years ago we were not, or were not 
here; one hundred years hence we shall not be here, 
yet we shall be. 

As not the oldest person here saw the town one hun- 
dred years ago, so, not the youngest here, in all human 
probability, will see it one hundred years hence. It is 
the serene and solemn thought of centennials that they 
who see one shall not see another. This whole audi- 
ence that, in the last century, has come up from cradles, 
in another will have melted into the unseen. 

Not, I know well, as we now look upon the town, 
shall we look upon it one hundred years hence from 
the other world. Then the chief end of its existence 



24 Centennial Address 

will appear to us to be not trade, not manufactures, not 
social intercourse, not even art or civil fame. Its 
history will then have significance for us only as it 
ministers to ends infinitely more elevated and compre- 
hensive. Then in the great view, there will appear to 
be a Plan which the Infinite has had on the history of 
the town from the beginning; not a rock of its hills 
will be seen to have been laid at random; not a slope 
of its water courses will seem to have been created 
without a purpose ; not a breath of air will have swept 
it by chance ; but every portion of its history will be 
tributary to one purpose and that the only adequate 
one, the one transcendent. We shall see in the town 
a place for the trial of souls ; one small thread in that 
infinite network of motives and events which separates 
the wheat from the chaflf ; a place of conflict, of storms, 
of thought beating upon immortal germs ; one small 
vase set in the wind of the universe for immaturities 
to bud in, and in that view, however small its portion 
of immensity in proportion to the whole, to be es- 
teemed, precious and sacred. 

Not doubting, my friends, that we have consciously 
or unconsciously, formed part of an Infinite Plan, 
I have suggested this as the point of view from which 
we must study the course of events, we are now to 
notice before we can apprehend any part of the true 
vitality of the history of our town. It will be true 
that we must so study the history before we understand 
it, whether we contemplate the town as it was in its 



TiCONDEROGA 25 

first period, when famed to the ends of the civiHzed 
earth as the foam on the crest made by the meeting 
of the two great historic waves of the last century. 

France and England, Catholicism and Protestantism, 
Absolutism and Liberty ; or, in the second period, 
spreading out its farms, deepening its mines, beginning 
to spin its wheels and to erect its spires. For historical 
research has dignity and worth, let us be assured, only 
as it seeks reverently to interpret the Divine Plan and 
speech in the world, and knows not as a figure of 
speech, but as a matter of fact that there is no history 
which is insignificant because none that is profane. 

It is difficult, standing here on this justly celebrated 
promontory at whose feet our two lakes meet, not to 
cast a glance at the outset, at the configuration of the 
surface of the country which in drawing hither the 
confluence of two water courses drew also the tide of 
events. That portion of the continent which lies east 
of the Hudson and Lake Champlain, lacks of being an 
island only by the small portage between the upper 
navigable waters of the Hudson and Lake George. 

Fire, seas, vapor, attraction, in the geological ages, 
so wrought that a pathway of water should here be 
given to man through a wilderness that was to sepa- 
rate two nations. The geological history cannot be 
studied with too inquisitive or reverent a spirit. First, 
were the hills ; the mountains thrown up, and in their 
metallic veins the forethought of future forge-fires; 
the soil ground by the glaciers for the plow; bowls 



26 Centennial Address 

scooped for lakes, beds for rivers ; a pure air, the sun. 
Here was not one random event. It is something which 
even the half thoughtless cannot pass over, the work 
beyond comment and antedating all history done here 
for us and for those who come after us by Him from 
whose fingers we came. To look upon His work is 
enough ; we may meditate upon this matter in devout 
silence. But in the Work was the Plan, of which the 
end is not yet. 

CHIEF EVENTS IN MILITARY HISTORY OF TICONDEROGA 

I purpose to notice first the Military History and 
secondly the Civil History of Ticonderoga, giving the 
more of detail in the bolder portions of each. 

Let me say, in advance, that in the account of the 
former, I wish to call especial attention to 

The Aboriginal Possession; 

The Battle of Champlain with the Iroquois in 1609 ; 

The Causes of the French and Indian War; 

The Importance of Ticonderoga in the struggle be- 
tween the French and English Governments and Ideas 
for supremacy on this Continent; 

The Building of Fort Ticonderoga in 1756; 

The Defeat of Abercrombie by Montcalm in 1758; 

The Capture of Ticonderoga by Amherst in 1759; 

The Capture by Ethan Allen in 1775; 

The Capture by Burgoyne in 1777. 

In the Civil History I wish to obtain your consider- 
ation of 



TiCONDEROGA 2J 

The obstacles to early settlement; 

The Conflict between the English and French 
Grants ; 

The narrow escape of the town from becoming a 
French lordship; 

The proof that the town was substantially settled 
as early as 1764; 

The nature of the first improvements made ; 

The character of the early settlers as the germ of 
that developed in the town, and then briefly : 

The progress, since 1800, of Agriculture, Manufac- 
tures, Trade, Education, Religion and finally, The 
History of the town in the War of the Rebellion. 

No History of Ticonderoga can be complete without 
a preliminary notice of the Iroquois Indians who 
played so conspicuous a part in that great contest, the 
French and Indian war, of which Ticonderoga was 
the most conspicuous theatre. 

The town was originally a part of the Iroquois do- 
minion. The confederacy, it is well known, con- 
sisted of five nations, the Mohawks, the Oneidas, On- 
ondagas, the Cayugas, and the Senecas, with a few 
subordinate tribes. The Mohawks had their chief 
villages on the Mohawk river, the Oneidas on 
Oneida lake, and the others on the lakes in north- 
ern New York which yet bear their names. At the 
time of the French and English conflict, this confed- 
eracy, according to the authority of Sir William John- 
son, could number about 2,000 warriors. The Gov- 



28 Centennial Address 

ernment was democratic. It had a war chief and a 
civil chief, the custom of deHberative representative 
assembHes which met around the celebrated Oneida 
Stone, yet to be seen in Stockbridge, N. Y. 

For years before the American Revolution, the ora- 
tors of the Iroquois had held up their Union to the 
imitation of the Colonists. 

The date of this confederation is uncertain, the best 
authority fix it at about 1550. One documentary au- 
thority is the testimony of a Dutch missionary at Fort 
Hunter who wrote in 1746, that according to the 
best information he could obtain among the Mohawks, 
the alliance took place, " one age or a man's life, before 
the white people came into this country." This was 
in 1609. The im.mediate dominion of the Iroquois 
seems to have been bounded eastward by the Green 
Mountains, north by the St. Lawrence and Ontario, 
west by Niagara river and Lake Erie, and south, by 
the lands lying along the sources of the Delaware and 
Susquehanna. Upper Canada was their hunting 
ground by right of conquest. Their indirect jurisdic- 
tion seems to have extended over all the vast region 
south of the great lakes, between the Ohio and Missis- 
sippi. But their military activity carried their con- 
quests far and wide. Smith met their warriors in Vir- 
ginia. The New England Indians and Colonists were 
not unacquainted with the terror of their name. The 
Delawares had been subdued by them. They were 
met by La Salle on the Mississippi. Traversing the 



TiCONDEROGA 29 

whole length of the vast Appalachian Chain their 
bands had descended on the tribes of Florida. Pass- 
ing Lakes George and Champlain in canoes, or in the 
winter on snow shoes, they raised their war cry at 
Montreal, and once defeated the Hurons below the 
walls of Quebec under the eyes of the French. 

They included in the Union as many as twelve or 
fourteen nations, but the original five tribes continued 
to give the general designation to the confederacy. 
The Tuscaroras, a nation that had emigrated south 
and then been driven back, united with the confeder- 
acy, which was afterwards called the Six Nations, as 
well as the Five Nations. No Nation was more re- 
nowned for its orators. The tribes seemed to have 
emigrated from the west. There are vague tales of 
supernatural origin but the substantial part of their 
tradition places their earliest recollected history in the 
Mississippi or the Rocky Mountains. Overcoming a 
more cultivated race in the Mississippi Valley, they 
came eastward and began, only after long internecine 
struggles, to see the necessity of Union. 

One of their severe wars was with the Adirondacks, 
a tribe of Indians whose name yet rests on the moun- 
tains of our county and town. Ticonderoga was the 
battle-field of the Indians as well as the whites. There 
is positive evidence that the Aboriginal pioneers of the 
soil had few dwellings between Lakes George and 
Champlain. It was the place where the two great 
waves of Indian warfare met, struggled, sank, and left 



30 Centennial Address 

their ruins. Upon these rugged mountain peaks, 
through arching forests, rocky paths and dark ravines, 
was spread the terror of civil butchery, of wily hate 
and of bloody revenge. In Vermont, on the west of 
the Green Mountains, the Iroquois are known to have 
had villages and corn fields, but not along the eastern 
shore of Essex county. They named Lake Champlain 
significantly Caniaderi-Garunte (the Lake that is gate 
to the Country). "These parts, though agreeable," 
writes Samuel Champlain, in his Journal of 1609, as 
he glided along the eastern shore of our county, " are 
not inhabited by any Indians on account of their 
wars." 

One story of the Adirondacks belongs to Ticonder- 
oga as the chief theatre of the old Northern conquest 
of the Iroquois. The Adirondacks had been subdued. 
Piskaret, their chief, with four associates, resolved to 
wipe out the disgrace of defeat. Passing through 
Champlain and up the Sorel they suddenly fell in with 
five boat loads of the enemy. The Adirondacks im- 
mediately set up their death song as though escape 
were impossible and resistance useless. As the Iro- 
quois came nearer, " a sudden discharge from the 
Adirondack muskets, which were loaded with small 
chain shot," burst rents through the frail sides of the 
Iroquois canoes so that they promptly filled with 
water. The Iroquois were then easily tomahawked as 
they floundered in the waves, except as many as could 
be safely secured, which were taken home to be tor- 



TiCONDEROGA 3I 

tured at leisure. Piskaret's four companions were 
satisfied with the glory of this exploit and preferred 
to enjoy their well-earned reputation to risking it, at 
his entreaty, in a new enterprise. 

Piskaret proceeded, therefore, alone to a principal 
village of the Iroquois, and using every stratagem 
known to the Indian for concealment, succeeded in 
entering, on two successive nights, two cabins and 
scalping the inmates. The third night the Iroquois set 
a guard at every door. Piskaret, stealthily approach- 
ing one of the sentinels, killed him by a blow on the 
head, and fled, pursued hotly by a party of the Iro- 
quois. The whole day passed in the chase. Piskaret 
was swifter than any Indian of his tribe and kept just 
enough in advance to incite the zeal of his pursuers. 
At night the Iroquois stopped to rest, and fatigued, 
fell asleep, seeing which, Piskaret silently stole upon 
and silently tomahawked every man of them, carrying 
home their scalps in horrid triumph. 

champlain's discovery of the lake 

It was to a party of Hurons and Algonquins, In- 
dians of Canada, who were proceeding against the 
Iroquois, that Samuel de Champlain joined himself 
in that bold and characteristic expedition in which he, 
first of white men, saw the lake which now bears his 
name. He was a French officer, of scientific and liter- 
ary acquirements, of a bold and persevering spirit, 
afterward Governor of Canada and founder of Quebec. 



32 Centennial Address 

It was in July, 1609, that his expedition in Lake 
Champlain was undertaken. In 1607 Jamestown 
had been founded. The Mayflower had not yet landed 
in New England. In September, 1609, Henry 
Hudson, in the Half Moon, sailed up the river 
that now bears his name, the two parts of the great 
inland pathway of water being discovered thus in the 
same year. Champlain had but one white companion. 
The memorable incident of his voyage was a battle 
with the Iroquois when the Indians first heard the shot 
of firearms. The echoes of the arquebus were heard 
far and long. 

They gave the Iroquois from the first a suspicion 
of the white man. They did much to seal their oppo- 
sition to the French. Perhaps they decided where the 
Indian makeweight should be placed in the French and 
Indian war, strengthened the English, drove the 
French power out of Canada, and established Protes- 
tantism in America. The place where the battle was 
fought, without much doubt, was on the soil of Ticon- 
deroga where Carillon was afterward built. 

The promontory or Cape is there; there is a Cape 
at Crown Point which might answer the description, 
but the latitude of Ticonderoga is the same with that 
given in Champlain's narrative ; the designation of the 
place on Champlain's map seems to fix the locality 
near Ticonderoga; moreover Champlain describes a 
" water-fall " which he " afterward saw," apparently 
when in the pursuit of the Iroquois, and which must 



TiCONDEROGA 33 

have been the fall of the outlet of Lake George. Writ- 
ers generally agree in placing the scene of this first 
conquest on the bold promontory for which the French 
afterwards so unsuccessfully contended. Champlain's 
battle with the Iroquois in 1609 makes this region older 
to history than Plymouth Rock. The opening quarter 
of the 17th century is crowded with dates of extraor- 
dinary importance to the English-speaking world. 
Queen Elizabeth died in 1603 ; John Milton was born 
in 1608; Champlain's battle with the Iroquois was 
fought in 1609, and in the same year Hudson discov- 
ered the river which bears his name; the authorized 
version of the English translation of the Bible, com- 
monly known as the King James version, first appeared 
in 161 1, • Shakespeare died in 1616; the Pilgrim 
Fathers landed in 1620; Charles I came to his throne 
in 1625. 

This region was known to history seven years before 
Shakespeare died and eleven years before the May- 
flower sailed. 

A silence continues in the history until 1646. Then 
another white man passes through the gateway. It 
is Father Jogues, the first Jesuit missionary among the 
Iroquois. He arrived at Lake Andiatarocte, as Lake 
George was then called, on the evening of the festival 
of the Holy Sacrament or Corpus Christi, and hence 
gave the lake its French name, St. Sacrement. 

The silence goes on through the latter half of this 
century in the history. Europe was swarming with 



34 Centennial Address 

great events but there is no clear record of what was 
transpiring here. There is one bright spot. It is 
probably certain that had there been white men to 
observe, in 1689 there would have been seen, tramping 
over the old Mohawk road in Trout Brook valley, 
landing from canoes at the portage of the falls, and 
passing on down Champlain a band of twelve hundred 
Iroquois warriors in their battle paint. The occasion 
of their passage illustrates some of the motives that 
afterwards had great influence in shaping events that 
occurred at Ticonderoga. The French and the Iro- 
quois had long been mercilessly at war. The com- 
batants being worn out, a treaty of peace at last was 
about to be signed. Adario, or the Rat, an Indian 
chief belonging to the tribe of Hurons, the enemies 
of the Iroquois, resolved to prevent by strategy the 
declaration of peace. Adario was scandalized that the 
French should enter into a treaty with the Iroquois 
without consulting the Hurons who had been the 
allies of the French in the war. Gathering a party 
he laid in ambush for the ambassadors of the Iroquois 
at a spot just above the Cascades about thirty miles 
above Montreal, where he knew they would be obliged 
to land. Several of the ambassadors were killed and 
the rest taken prisoners. Decanisora, the celebrated 
orator of the Iroquois was among the latter. 

Astonished beyond expression the survivors ex- 
plained that they were on a mission of peace. Adario 
on hearing this, at once put on an appearance of sur- 



TiCONDEROGA 35 

prise and indignation; says he waylaid them by the 
express order of the French Governor of Canada, 
who assured him that they were a band come to plunder 
the Canadian villages. He instantly liberates the whole 
number that survived, except one whom he detained 
in place of one of his warriors that had fallen, and 
tells the other to go home, and rouse their confed- 
eracy to avenge the treachery that they had experi- 
enced. Taking the hostage to Michillimackinac, he 
tells such a story to the French Commandant, that the 
Iroquois is put to death by torture, in presence of 
another Iroquois, an aged man. This witness Adario 
next liberates telling him to go and tell his confederacy 
that the warrior, Piskaret had adopted, had been 
wrenched from him by the French Commandant, and, 
notwithstanding Piskaret's utmost efforts, cruelly put to 
death. This half satanic piece of denunciation worked 
its designed effect. The Iroquois, instead of appearing 
to sign the treaty of peace, passed through Lakes 
George and Champlain, landed with twelve hundred 
warriors on the Island of Montreal, killed one thousand 
of its inhabitants, devastated the whole island and 
finally embarked in their canoes, having lost the aston- 
ishingly small number of only thirty of their warriors. 
The name of Black Kattle, the principal chief, was 
thereafter a terror to the French colonists. 

Thus closes the century with the wilderness yet un- 
broken on the Lakes. Greater events were preparing. 



36 Centennial Address 

causes of the french and indian war 

As History is but series of logical connections, it is 
necessary to give a slight sketch of the causes and 
outlines of the French and Indian war, to understand 
that portion of it connected with Champlain valley, and 
especially with Lake George and Ticonderoga, which 
two latter spots were its chief field. 

In the eighteenth century Romanism and Protestant- 
ism, Absolutism and Liberty, the Reformation and the 
Middle Ages, were in conflict in Europe. Frederick 
of Prussia stood in the center of the continent and 
hurled the four million of his subjects against the 
allied Catholic sovereigns. He preferred, as was be- 
lieved, destruction to the desertion of the cause of free 
government and of Protestantism. It was an age when 
men's minds were alive with the new thought that the 
Reformation of Luther had thrown into the world. 
The power of the papal chain at Rome over Kings had 
not been shaken by the great political and religious 
events that were about to occur. England was the 
ally of Prussia. America was a new field. It was a 
part of the plan of Providence that these progressive 
and conservative forces should struggle for this 
new continent as well as for the old. It 
is certain that motives connected with the love 
of empire and the love of wealth prompted 
the efforts of both the French and English in 
the contest. The fur trade was remunerative 



TiCONDEROGA 37 

and a few statesmen saw tHe future political importance 
of the western empire. But it is also certain that 
religious motives added intensity, weight, and dignity 
to the struggle for the continent. Catholicism and 
Protestantism contended for the predominant influence 
over the savages and over the young settlements of 
America. The question was whether the vast wilds 
of the new world should grow up under Romanism 
and the ideas of Absolutism in government with which 
it was allied, or under Protestantism and the ideas of 
Liberty which it had naturally espoused. The activity, 
daring and devotion of the Jesuit Missionary is one of 
the most noble pages of the history of the continent 
and illustrates the religious spirit of the colonial era. 
The French government gave them every facility for 
influence. They came in great numbers in proportion 
to the settlers. When Quebec had but twenty settlers, 
there arrived four priests to take care of the Indians 
seven years before the first white child was born. 
They had high privileges given them in fur compa- 
nies. No important enterprise was undertaken without 
their council. They pushed far on into the frontiers. 
A Missionary led to the discovery of the Mississippi, 
a Missionary discovered Lake George. Following the 
wounded in battle, they administered the sacrament to 
the dying at the cost of their own lives. 

Meanwhile in New England, Protestant ideas were 
directing affairs. The Puritans held before their gaze 
the solemn vision of a Theocracy which had begun to 



38 Centennial Address 

organize at home and wished it to extend over the new 
continent. The people of Protestant England were 
deeply interested in the religious aspect of events. The 
King made avowals of his fidelity to the Protestant 
cause in the popular portion of his speeches to Parlia- 
ment. Keeping in view this background of political 
and religious motives a better apprehension will be 
gained of the particular grounds upon which France 
and England legally based their respective claims to 
territory, the conflict of which threatened so much in 
the future. The right of possession went with the 
fact of discovery. John and Sebastian Cabot, Venetian 
navigators in the employment of the English King, 
had discovered the continent. Columbus had seen but 
one of the West Indian Islands in 1492. In 1497 the 
Cabots had discovered Labrador and explored the 
coast southward as far as Albemarle Sound. They 
took possession in the name of the English King. In 
1584, Queen Elizabeth gave a patent to Sir .Walter 
Raleigh of vast regions in Virginia and South Carolina. 
In 1606, a charter, the first colonial one ever given, 
granted to certain parties all the soil from Cape Fear 
to Halifax. The other Colonial parties granted to New 
England, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and 
Maryland, gave jurisdiction indefinitely to the west, 
some of them as far as the " South Sea," as the undis- 
covered Pacific was then called. On these discoveries 
the EngHsh claim was based. Now the two great 
rivers of North America had been discovered by 



TiCONDEROGA 39 

Frenchmen. In 1535, Jacques Cartier, having in the 
previous year discovered the gulf of St. Lawrence, in 
a second voyage entered the river itself, discovered the 
Island of Orleans, passed up to Hochelaga and changed 
its name to Montreal. In 1609 Champlain had discov- 
ered the Lake that now bears his name. In 1673 Mar- 
quette, a French Missionary, had walked from Green 
Bay, followed the Fox River, across the Wisconsin, 
gone down it; discovered the Mississippi and floated 
down its channel beyond the mouth of the Arkansas. 
In 1689 La Salle, the French Governor of Frontenac, 
aroused by the report of Joliet, Marquette's compan- 
ion, sailed down the Mississippi till he reached its 
mouth. Upon these discoveries France based her 
claim. Thus were the parties situated with regard to 
original jurisdiction. France had the better claim. 
But each nation repelled the advances of the other. 
France, in further support of her position, rested upon 
an article in the Treaty of Ryswick. That agreement 
had been signed in 1697. By it all lands on any river 
in America the mouth of which was held by either 
nation, was guaranteed to that nation as high as the 
first sources of the stream. Under this clause France 
made her vast claim to all the lands traversed by 
waters flowing into the Great Lakes, the St. Lawrence 
and the Mississippi. England impetuously asserted that 
such a sense of this article was never intended. So 
William Keith, Governor of Virginia, in his report to 
the Commissioners of Trade and Plantations, says, in 



40 Centennial Address 

17 1 8, that such interpretation was inconsistent with 
grants from the Crown and with the very existence 
of the Colonies. But France had the right of discovery 
and the words of the Treaty, and was rapidly pushing 
actual occupation of the country on her side. Her 
plan was bold and magnificent as her statesmen were 
ambitious and far-seeing. Her purpose was distinctly 
confessed. It was no less than to shut the English up 
on the Atlantic slope of the Alleghanies. She pro- 
jected a grand cordon of Fortresses to extend from 
the mouth of the St. Lawrence, along that river, Lake 
Ontario, the Ohio and the Mississippi, to Louisiana. 
She built forts at Frontenac, now Kingston, Niagara, 
Erie, Venango, DuOuesne, at the Junction of the 
Monongahela and Alleghany, Detroit, Kaskaskia, 
Mouth of the Wabash, Black Islands on the Ohio, 
and four between the last point and New Orleans. 
This was the wall to shut in the English and shelter 
the French traders in furs. Besides these she had seve- 
ral forts in the far Northwest and on the northern 
borders of New England and Acadia. Violating the 
obligations of a professed peace, a French Armament 
in 1 73 1, seized upon the promontory opposite Crown 
Point and soon after upon the peninsula itself, and 
erected there Fort St. Frederick, now Fort Crown 
Point. 

Several of these forts, particularly the one at Crown 
Point, were within the lands of the Iroquois. But by 
the Treaty of Utrecht of 1713, France had recognized 



TiCONDEROGA 4 1 

the paramount sovereignty of Great Britain over these 
tribes. The words of the Fifteenth Article of this 
Treaty speak expressly of the Five Nations, as 
Quinqiic Nationes Sine Cantones Indorum Maquae 
Brittaniae Imperio Suhjectas. Their dependence upon 
England the Iroquois had repeatedly acknowledged, 
once in a Treaty of 1683; again at Albany in 1701 ; 
and again in 1726. Great Britain had guaranteed to 
the Iroquois the protection of all their rights of soil. 
By the Treaty of Utrecht the lands of the Iroquois 
were to remain, " Inviolate by any occupation or en- 
croachment of France." The cloud was thus gather- 
ing and the first bolt falls on the Ohio. 

A tract of six hundred thousand acres on this river 
had been granted to some gentlemen of England and 
Virginia associated under the name of the Ohio Com- 
pany. Its object was to push the trade in furs with the 
Indians and to effect settlement. The French, con- 
sidering the posts of this Company as infringing upon 
their exclusive rights, attacked the traders and carried 
some of them prisoners to Canada. Governor Din- 
widdle of Virginia resolves to demand in the name of 
the King that the French desist from operations that 
were deemed violation of existing treaties. One of 
the most interesting passages of American history is 
the account of the journey of the young man then only 
twenty-two years of age, who was appointed to traverse 
the wilderness of the Alleghanies, obtain information 
of the French Posts and deliver this message. That 



42 Centennial Address 

young man's name was George Washington. St. 
Pierre, the Commandant of the Fort, with French 
suavity referred the matter to his superiors, saying 
that he had acted only according to orders. Washing- 
ton returns, having been absent three weeks and, ap- 
pointed Colonel, is sent in 1754 to drive out the French 
from Fort DuQuesne. This was built at the junction 
of the Alleghany and Monongahela rivers, on a spot at 
which Washington himself had recommended that a 
fort should be built. Washington has a skirmish with 
dejumonville, who falls ; he is then partially sur- 
prised at Fort Necessity, by the French from Fort 
DuQuesne, resists gallantly, is overpowered, surren- 
ders with the honors of war, and goes home from his 
first campaign. 

Britain now proposes to the Colonies the plan of 
Union for the purpose of resisting the French. A 
Convention in 1754 meets at Albany to conciliate the 
Iroquois and mature this plan of confederation. Frank- 
lin draws the paper, including the ideas of a President 
General and a General Congress, but the King thought 
the latter had too much power and the Colonists that 
the former had too much, and so the plan, that however 
contained the seed of the American Union, was not 
adopted in full. Franklin presents this plan July 4th, 
just twenty-two years before he signs the Declaration 
of American Independence. 

General Braddock is now sent over to take command 
of the Armies. He calls a Convention of Colonial 



TiCONDEROGA 43 

Governors to meet in Virginia and the plan of the 
Campaign of 1755 is now laid out. Four expeditions 
are decided upon, one against Nova Scotia, another 
against Fort DuQuesne, a third against Niagara, and 
a fourth against Crown Point. The first succeeded. 
It brought under the English sway the whole island of 
Cape Breton. The second against Fort DuQuesne 
failed in the defeat of General Braddock (surprised 
while ascending a slope gashed on each side by ravines 
near Fort DuQuesne), was cut to pieces by a double 
flanked fire, and not understanding Indian warfare and 
too haughty to receive instructions from Colonial offi- 
cers, would have lost his entire army but for the 
bravery of Colonel Washington. 

The third against Niagara failed. Governor Shirley 
of Massachusetts, who commanded it, did not arrive 
at Oswego, from which the attack was to be made, 
until August 21, and delayed until the season prevented 
the attack. The one against Crown Point brings us 
near our own soil, and needs to be treated a little more 
in detail, now that its connection with the rest of the 
campaign can be seen. It was commanded by Generals 
Johnson and Lyman. At the place where the village 
of Fort Edward now stands, but where Colonel Lydius 
was then the only settler, they built a Fort calling it 
Fort Lyman, a name a few years after changed to Fort 
Edward, in honor of Edward, Duke of York. Leaving 
a small portion of his men here and nearly all his pro- 
visions, General Johnson pushes on to the head of Lake 



44 Centennial Address 

George, cutting a road nearly where the present road 
runs, and builds almost on the spot where the hotel of 
the name now stands, Fort William Henry. '' No house 
has ever been built here," writes General Johnson, and 
not an acre of ground had been cleared at the date 
when he began the Fort. 

BATTLE OF LAKE GEORGE 

It is impossible to leave out a notice of the battle of 
Lake George in 1755 and of the massacre at Fort 
William Henry in 1757, from the history of Ticon- 
deroga, because the fate of the French arms in the 
former battle caused the building of Fort Carillon, the 
French expedition under whose eye the massacre took 
place started from this town and the tragedy itself was 
prominent among the causes that brought Abercrom- 
bie's armies to Ticonderoga in the following year. 

Dieskau, the French Commander at Crown Point, 
who had been, against his preference, diverted from an 
attack on Oswego by the French Governor's fear of 
seeing the English at Montreal, received news of the 
English advance to the head of Lake George and of 
the building of Fort Edward. He resolved to attack 
the latter Fort. His plan was to capture General 
Johnson's provisions, cut off his communication with 
Albany and then defeat his detachment at Lake George. 
He hoped also to surprise Albany and Schenectady, 
take possession of the Mohawk River and so cut off 
the English communication with Oswego. Dieskau 



TiCONDEROGA 45 

was a French officer who had served with distinction 
under Alarshall Saxe. As this plan of his attack on 
Fort Edward has been often criticized it is necessary to 
notice his position. It is said that he took too few 
men with him. 

His own reply to this is that he intended to make 
but a raid of a few days, and that his provisions were 
scanty. He had food enough to subsist a small de- 
tachment but not enough to subsist his whole army 
on a march as far as Fort Edward. Besides in passing 
where bridges have to be made of a single log at times, 
a small army could be moved with greater celerity. 
His motto, too, was '' Boldness wins ! " Although he 
had three thousand men at Crown Point he took but 
fifteen hundred of them, six hundred Indians, six hun- 
dred Canadians, and three hundred Regulars. The 
savages, who were conquerors of the French in Canada, 
had shown some unwillingness to fight against the 
Iroquois of New York. 

Passing from Crown Point up Champlain, a part of 
the remaining fifteen hundred is left as a rear guard on 
the promontory afterwards occupied by Fort Ticon- 
deroga. This is the first French military occupation of 
this ground known in history. Fifteen miles further 
up Champlain he leaves another detachment at the Two 
Rocks, now called the Narrows. Rowing up South 
Bay, he leaves the canoes and bateaux in charge of a 
small guard and with the remainder of his army 
plunges across the forest toward Fort Edward. 



46 Centennial Address 

Almost within a few hours' march of it, about the 
middle of the afternoon, a courier, seen galloping on 
horseback from the direction of Fort William Henry, 
is stopped by the Indians and a letter is found on his 
person from Johnson warning the Commandant at 
Fort Edward that a French detachment was about to 
attack his Fort to be on his guard and protect the 
provisions. At this point the Indians refused to go 
further. It is commonly stated that they feared the 
cannon of Fort Edward. This reason is given in 
Johnson's report. But in Dieskau's account, the 
Indians are said to have refused to go further because 
they would not fight against a Fort which was on 
soil not belonging to the French. They would fight 
against Fort William Henry, not against Fort Ed- 
ward. The reason of this distinction may have been in 
the French claim to all lands traversed by waters 
flowing into Lake Champlain, which they discovered, 
Fort William Henry on Lake George, standing on 
such grounds but Fort Edward on the Hudson not 
being so situated. 

Dieskau resolves to proceed without the Indians, as 
they refuse to even take part by setting up their war- 
whoop, even if the French did all the fighting. The 
savages, as soon as they saw the General's determina- 
tion, advance to the forest and take the lead as if to 
show their zeal. Dieskau follows them, and at night- 
fall finds himself led considerably out of the way and 
unable to attack the Fort as soon as he expected. This 



TiCONDEROGA 47 

was the beginning of the Indian treachery. A council 
is held and a resolution taken, as Fort Edward was 
reported to be more nearly finished than it had been 
before stated to be, to attack the camp at Lake George. 
Dieskau has been criticized for taking this course. His 
reply is that the Indians agreed to fight with him 
there, but would not fight against Fort Edward. On 
the march toward Lake George, the French scouts 
come in and announce a body of English troops, appar- 
ently starting or on the march for Fort Edward. This 
was the bloody morning scout, sent out by Johnson 
under command of Colonel Ephraim Williams. Dies- 
kau forms his men so as to take the English in a 
cid de sac. The Indians are placed in ambush on one 
side of the road, the Canadians on the other, while the 
Regulars close the road at the further end of the 
gauntlet. The Indians and Canadians had orders to 
lie close on the ground and not to stir until the French 
column had fired. Into this trap the English were 
advancing. " Unfortunately for me," writes Dieskau, 
in his representation in a dialogue published in France 
describing the afifair, " some Indians more curious than 
others rose up and, perceiving the Indians had a party 
of Mohawks with them, notified the rest of this cir- 
cumstance, whereupon all the Iroquois rose and fired 
in the air as a warning that there was an ambuscade. 
Seeing that my net was discovered I ordered the 
French and Canadians to attack the enemies; the 
Indians did likewise, except the Iroquois, who did 



48 Centennial Address 

not budge. The English were doubled up like a pack 
of cards and fled pell-mell to their entrenchment, 
which then was only a short league or thereabouts, off." 
Williams' detachment had contained about one thou- 
sand men. King Hendrick, the famous Indian Chief- 
tain, corpulent in person and aged, was mounted on a 
horse, and fell almost at the first fire, himself alone a 
host. Colonel Williams, who had substantially 
founded Williams College on his way to join Johnson 
at Albany, while standing on a rock to reconnoitre the 
field and ordering his men to go further up the hill 
to the right, was shot dead near the spot where his 
monument now stands. Perceiving that they were 
nearly surrounded, the English, admirably led by 
Lieut. Col. yV^hitcomb of New Haven, retreat to their 
entrenchments. Dieskau pursued closely, hoping to 
rush into the camp with the retreating provincials. 
But, as soon as the English cannon, of which there 
were a few in Johnson's camp, open, the Indians halt 
and the Canadians intimidated, take to the trees. Dies- 
kau, with his regulars, halts a moment hoping probably 
that the Canadians and Indians would rally and rush 
on the flank while the regulars engaged the center. 
But, not being properly supported, the Regulars ad- 
vance to storm the English breastworks, " which," 
Dieskau says in the dialogue quoted above, " was 
nothing but a sort of barricade of very trifling height." 
The cannon of the English decide the fortunes of the 
day. Nearly the whole afternoon the French Regulars 



TiCONDEROGA 49 

brave the storm, most of them perched before the 
entrenchment. Dieskau himself, wounded in the legs, 
falls behind a tree. He orders his vest and overcoat 
to be brought to him, and apparently resolves to be 
taken prisoner rather than try the chances of a retreat 
with his wounds. 

Montreuil, the second in command, strives to induce 
him to be carried from the field but in vain. He is 
ordered to conduct the retreat, which he does with 
skill. " Shortly afterward," writes Dieskau in the 
French dialogue already quoted, " came two Canadians 
from him, one of whom was killed outright and fell 
on my legs, to my great embarrassment, and, as the 
other could not remove me by himself, I told him 
to bring me some men, but, soon after I heard the 
retreat beaten without seeing anything, being 
seated on ground somewhat low, with my back 
leaning against a tree; having remained in that 
situation about half an hour, I saw one of the 
enemy's soldiers within ten or twelve paces of 
me, taking aim at me behind a tree. I made signs 
at him with my hands not to fire, but he did not fail 
to do so ; the shot traversed both my hips ; leaping on 
me at the same time, he said (in very good French), 
* Surrender ! ' I said to him ' You rascal, why did you 
fire at me? you see a man lying on the ground bathed 
in his blood and you fire, eh ? ' He answered, ' How 
did I know but you had a pistol? I prefer to kill the 
devil than that the devil kill me.' ' You are a French- 



50 Centennial Address 

man, then ? ' I asked. * Yes,' he replied. ' It is more 
than ten years since I left Canada,' whereupon divers 
others fell upon me and stripped me. I told them to 
carry me to their General, which they did. On learn- 
ing who I was he had me laid on his bed and sent for 
surgeons to dress my wounds, and though wounded 
himself he refused all attendance until mine were 
dressed." 

The Indians were mourning the loss of Hendrick and 
terribly clamorous for the life of Dieskau for revenge. 
Johnson kept him closely guarded in his tent. " I ob- 
served," says Dieskau in the dialogue, ** that, as he 
was wounded himself I was afraid I incommoded him, 
and requested him to have me removed elsewhere. 
' I dare not,' he answered, ' for were I to do so the 
Indians would massacre you. They must have time to 
sleep.' Toward eleven o'clock at night I was removed 
under an escort of a captain and fifty men, to the tent 
of a Colonel where I passed the night. The guard had 
orders not to suffer any Indian to approach me. 
Nevertheless, one of them came next morning near the 
tent and the sentinel, seeing that he was not armed, 
allowed him to enter, but the moment he was in, he 
drew a naked sword from under a sort of cloak he 
wore, and approached to stab me, whereupon the 
Colonel, in whose tent I was, threw himself between 
us, disarmed the Indian and put him out." 

Dieskau remained nine days at the English camp 
and every attention was heaped upon him by Johnson. 



TiCONDEROGA 5 I 

He was finally sent to Albany, then to New York, and 
at last went to England, where in spite of his wounds 
healing very slowly, he recovered. He does not seem 
to have been afterwards engaged in the French army. 
Montreuil conducted the broken French army, half- 
starved and greatly disheartened, back to the promon- 
tory of Ticonderoga where they formed a camp. This 
was July 10, 1755. The defeat was on the 8th. Had 
General Johnson advanced he probably might have 
taken Ticonderoga and Crown Point, but he feared 
to have his connection with Albany cut off, and he 
wasted the summer in building Fort William Henry on 
the scene of his exploit. This Fort was of wood and 
earthworks, as was also Fort Edward, wood pens filled 
in with earth. The defeat of the French in the battle 
of Lake George and the evident danger that the Eng- 
lish, in proceeding against Fort St. Frederick, would 
seize first upon Carillon, were the reasons that led to 
the fortification of the latter Fort. Hitherto a wilder- 
ness, this promontory, in the fall of 1755, becomes 
alive with the work of axe, hammer, spade and saw. 
A storehouse was put up at the landing and a saw 
mill on the north side of the Lower Falls, at the same 
time with the Fort on the hill. 

BUILDING OF FORT TICONDEROGA 

During the season of 1756 upwards of 2,000 French 
were constantly engaged upon the Fort. The name 
Carillon (Chime of Bells) was applied to the promon- 



52 Centennial Address 

tory, perhaps to the whole locality of the outlet, before 
the Fort was built. The Fort must not be thought of 
as built, in its present form, by the French alone. It 
was at first but a stockade, its walls formed of beams 
of timber in pens with traverses and the space filled 
in with earth. Amherst repaired the Fort and made 
additions of masonry on a scale of great magnificence 
in 1759. The Americans in the Revolution made im- 
portant additions, especially to the walls on Mount 
Independence. But the earliest notice of the Fort that 
I have found is the following extract from a letter of 
Governor Vaudreuil of Canada to M. de Machault. 
It is dated Sept. 25, 1755. " Had Monsieur M. de 
Dieskau returned victorious the army would have 
marched with a right good will " against Choueguen 
(the name by which Oswego was called at the time. 
I must, therefore, my lord, turn my attention to the 
security of the Colony and postpone the Choueguen 
expedition. I have been obliged at the same time to 
anticipate the enemy's progress in the direction of the 
Fort St. Frederick and Niagara. 

" I have despatched M. de Lotbiniere, the engineer, 
to Fort St. Frederick and, agreeably to my orders he 
has been to the outlet, of Lake St. Sacrement. He has 
reported to me that the situation of Carillon, is one of 
the best adapted for the construction of works capable 
of checking the enemy; that the suitable place for a 
fortification is a rock which crowns all the environs 
whence guns could command both the river which 



TiCONDEROGA 53 

runs from Lake St. Sacrement and that leading to the 
Grand Marais (Lake Champlain above Ticonderoga) 
and Wood Creek. I see no work more pressing and 
more useful than this fortification, because it will 
enable me to maintain a garrison to stop the enemy 
in their march from Lake St. Sacrement, the imme- 
diate outlet of which is not more than a league and a 
quarter from that Fort ; and I will be able to harass 
and fire on them pretty often, within pistol range for 
more than three-quarters of a league in a river, both 
on this and on the other side of the Carrying Place." 

The foremost scouts of Sir William Johnson, were 
Majors Rogers and Putnam. They roamed about the 
two French Forts, burning bateaux, destroying cattle, 
and taking now and then a scalp. Captain Putnam, 
once taken prisoner, was tied to an oak, yet pointed out 
in Crown Point, and, according to tradition, the fires 
were kindled around him by the Indians, when he was 
rescued by a French officer. The band of Major 
Rogers was composed chiefly of old hunters, of un- 
erring aim and accustomed to the Indian style of war- 
fare. Tradition has preserved the outlines of the event 
of a battle in which his force was cut to pieces and he 
barely escaped with his life. Emboldened by the tardi- 
ness and inefficiency of the English provincial and 
home government, Montcalm, leaving a proper force 
at Carillon, returns in person to Montreal, descends 
upon Oswego and takes it in 1756. This event threw 
great joy over New France, as this port had been the 



54 Centennial Address 

rendezvous of the English power in northwestern New 
York. 

MASSACRE AT FORT WILLIAM HENRY 

One morning in the winter of 1757 the garrison of 
Fort William Henry was disturbed by a light appearing 
on the ice far down Lake George. Montcalm had not 
been idle. The disturbance was from a party of French 
and Indians who had passed through Lakes Champlain 
and George on snow shoes, and sleeping behind sails, 
they fell upon Fort William Henry, and though they 
did not take it, they burned its outbuildings and in- 
flicted so much damage that the English campaign for 
a year was retarded. But the summer of 1757 was to 
witness at once the summit of French power and of 
Indian cruelty on the continent ; Montcalm, instead ot 
waiting for Johnson to attack Ticonderoga resolved to 
attack Fort William Henry. An army was gathered at 
the Fort. Cannon and stones with immense labor were 
carted to the landing place on Lake George. The 
Indian Chiefs were somewhat uncertain material and 
consultations were held with them again and again. 
A part of the Army started by land to cover the land- 
ing of bateaux from the water. De Levis commanded 
this division. It marched through Trout Brook valley, 
" Back of Bald Mountain," cutting a road by the way 
of Bolton through to Caldwell. The main portion of 
the army encamped on the Lake in bateaux. The 
Indians left a complete set of clothes suspended at the 



TiCONDEROGA 55 

carrying place as an offering to the Manitou to pro- 
pitiate success. The chief part of them went by land 
on the east side of the Lake for a few miles and were 
then taken on board the bateaux. Montcalm landed 
his cannon in Artillery cove just out of reach of the 
guns of Fort William Henry on the west side of the 
Lake. Colonel Monroe was Commandant, General 
Webb was at Fort Edward but refused reinforcements 
on the ground that he dared not weaken his fort so 
to leave Albany exposed. His conduct previously had 
been craven. Montcalm opened his trench. The bat- 
teries are covered nearer and nearer. The Indians are 
in glee at the execution done by the cannon and at 
being permitted occasionally to aim a piece themselves. 
A portion of the French army is stationed on the road 
to Fort Edward, and another back of the English and 
French Camp, which was on the west of the Fort. 
One or two alarms announcing that English reinforce- 
ments are at hand prove groundless, but a letter from 
Webb is intercepted declining to send any, and advis- 
ing Monroe to surrender. Montcalm sends an officer 
of his staff to Monroe with this letter. Monroe replies 
that he means to make stout resistance. On the day 
of the cannonade the Fort runs up the white flag. 
Montcalm grants honorable terms of capitulation in 
view of the vigorous defense. The English are to 
march out and with one cannon, they are to be es- 
corted to Fort Edward on the next morning by a 
French guard. Montcalm distinctly tells the English 



56 Centennial Address 

official with whom the business of the capitulation was 
done that he cannot give his word of honor that it 
will be observed until he has seen his Indian Chiefs. 
These are called in, and, in presence of the English 
official, hear the terms of the surrender and promise 
to observe them and to keep their young men from 
plunder. Bougainville, one of Montcalm's aides, 
then has orders which he executes, to spill the liquor 
casks in the French camps. But the Indians begin in 
the very evening of the surrender to plunder the case- 
mates of the Fort, to demand the clothes of the sick 
and to murder the wounded. The chief part of the 
English are in the intrenched camp on the hill where 
Fort George afterwards stood. The scenes that occur 
on the following morning are a tragedy over which one 
almost wishes to draw the veil. " We have just 
learned, my lord," writes Bougainville, Montcalm's 
aide-de-camp, in a postscript giving an account of the 
victory and dated " Montreal, 19th August, 1757," 
" the news of the outrages committed by the Indians on 
the morning of the tenth. The English, who entertain 
an inconceivable fear of them, being impatient to get 
at a distance from them, wished to march before our 
escort was collected and in order. Some of the soldiers 
in spite of all the warnings that had been giY.en on that 
point, had given them some rum to drink and who in 
the world could restrain two thousand Indians of 
thirty-two different Nations when they have drunk 
liquor? The disorder commenced by the Abenakis of 



TiCONDEROGA cy 

Panaouaniske in Acadia who pretended to have experi- 
enced some ill treatment at the hands of the English. 
Their example operated on others; they flung them- 
selves on the garrison, which instead of showing fight 
were panic stricken. This emboldened the Indians 
who pillaged them, killed some twenty soldiers and 
carried off five or six hundred. All the officers ran 
thither on the report of this disorder, made the greatest 
efforts to put a stop to it, so that some grenadiers of our 
escort were wounded by the Indians. The English 
themselves state publicly that the Marquis de Montcalm, 
Messrs. de Levis, de Bourlamaque and many others, 
ran the risk of their lives in order to save theirs, for 
in such cases the Indians have no respect for persons. 
At length the latter were quieted and M. de Mont- 
calm released immediately about four hundred of those 
that had been taken, whom he caused to be clothed and 
sent back to Fort Edward under an escort, after the 
Indians had departed. Those whom the Indians had 
brought to Montreal have been ransomed out of their 
hands by M. de Vaudreuil, at a great cost and at the 
King's expense, and they will be immediately for- 
warded to Halifax by a vessel sent as an express. The 
M. de Montcalm has written two letters; one to Gen- 
eral Webb, the other to Lord Loudon to notify them 
that this disorder, which was involuntary on the part 
of the French, ought not to afford the English a pre- 
text of disregarding the capitulation and that he would 



58 Centennial Address 

expect from their honor that they would observe it in 
all its points." 

In three things Montcalm cannot be excused, i, 
The number of the French guard was evidently insuffi- 
cient to keep down such an attack of the Indians as 
Montcalm says he himself expected ; 2, Montcalm was 
at an unsafe distance himself from the scene of danger ; 
3, He evidently allowed at Oswego, in the preceding 
year, pillage and cruelty by the Indians. By his own 
account he seems to have made very little effort to 
prevent the disorder at Oswego. 

In five things some palliation of his crime may be 
found. I, He distinctly told the English official that 
he could not be responsible for the keeping of the 
capitulation unless his Indians consented to keep it; 

2, He caused the liquor in his army to be spilled ; 

3, He perilled his own life and those of his officers, by 
English account, to stop the massacre ; 4, The English 
gave rum to the Indians, against express orders, and 
manifested a craven spirit when attacked ; 5, Mont- 
calm rescued about four hundred of the captives on 
the spot and treated them with every attention and 
the French Government bought others at an exorbitant 
ransom at Montreal and sent them back to Halifax. 

Montcalm undoubtedly is convicted of a degree of 
carelessness and perhaps of indifference to the fate of 
his prisoners which stain his reputation. Major Put- 
nam was sent from Fort Edward to see what was the 
condition of affairs after the French had gone back to 




-ife. 



J**' 



.^ 



TiCONDEROGA 59 

Ticonderoga. Many fled into the woods. For days 
the guns at Fort Edward were fired to give the right 
direction to the fugitives. Here, too, the Plan was 
advancing, not less in cloud than in sunshine. 

BATTLE OF TICONDEROGA 

I have now arrived at a point when I must ask the 
undivided attention of you all. I am about to describe 
that desperate battle, the most important and san- 
guinary that ever occurred in northern New York 
which took place upon the very ground upon which you 
are now seated. I am anxious that if this day should 
leave nothing else upon the mind of this audience, the 
details of this battle should be clearly impressed there 
and its memory held sacred, since it hallows every step 
that can be taken through the busiest part of our town 
all the way from these lines of agony to the waters of 
Lake George. I intend in no case, to draw on my 
imagination for facts. 

On the Frontier of Canada which, by the French 
claim, ran along the St. Lawrence, Champlain and 
the Ohio to the Mississippi, no Fort was of greater 
importance, at the time, than Ticonderoga. None, too, 
needed more vigilance for its defense. Bourlamaque, 
who had commanded at Carillon since the loth of 
June had received " information certain that the Eng- 
lish were concentrating an army of twenty-five thou- 
sand men between Fort Lydius " — that is Fort Edward 
— " and Fort George : that they had made an immense 



6o Centennial Address 

collection of arms and ammunition ; that they had con- 
siderable train of artillery and whatever is necessary 
for a vast enterprise." 

But the Marquis de Vaudreuil, who, if Montcalm's 
complaints are to be taken as well grounded, was rather 
an inefficient and even unintelligent Governor of Can- 
ada, had been prevented during the whole spring and 
early summer, by the want of provisions from sending 
succor to Bourlamaque at Ticonderoga. The winter 
of 1757 and 1758 was one of unusual scarcity of pro- 
visions. Butter was worth thirty-five sous per pound. 
Beef, which had been all the winter fifteen sous, sold 
in June for twenty-five. Pork, which in 1756 was 
worth seven sous, was thirty sous per pound. It was 
not, therefore, until, " from the 20th to the 30th of 
June " that the French troops proceeded from Mon- 
treal to Ticonderoga. Even then, rather to Montcalm's 
dissatisfaction, Vaudreuil thought best to divide his 
forces, and retained at Montreal Chevalier de Levis 
with a considerable body of troops who were to be 
sent on certain negotiations among the Five Nations 
and then on a secret expedition against Schenectady, 
then called Corlac. Montcalm himself arrived at Ti- 
conderoga on Tuesday, June 30th. Sieur Volfst, a 
French officer, had been recently sent with a detach- 
ment to carry dispatches to the English General at the 
head of Lake George. The time for him to return had 
more than arrived. His detention confirmed the ac- 
counts of the prisoners of the presence near the head 



TiCONDEROGA 6l 

of Lake George, of a large body of English troops. 
Montcalm immediately set about making preparations 
for the approaching conflict. To form a clear idea 
of the topography of the battle of Ticonderoga nothing 
is required of the historical student, unacquainted with 
locality, but to imagine, laid out before him on the 
ground a gigantic printed capital Y. The body of the 
Y, below the forking, is Lake Champlain running a 
little west of north. The left branch of the Y is the 
part of Champlain between Ticonderoga and South 
Bay near which Whitehall now stands. A shallow 
reedbound, muddy river for all the upper part of its 
course, and having, about two-thirds of the way to 
South Bay, a narrow point called the Two Rocks 
where an engineer had proposed to the French authori- 
ties, to erect an outpost of Carillon. The right branch 
of the Y is Lake George, lying thirty-three miles long 
in a bowl of grand mountains, — the highest of which 
on the Champlain side is twenty-two hundred feet in 
elevation, — and contracted, four miles before it reaches 
Champlain, into an outlet which falls, principally in 
two places one mile and a half apart, two hundred and 
twenty feet before reaching the sister Lake. Two 
miles above the lower end of the Lake is Bald Moun- 
tain, now called Rogers Rock, one side of which is a 
sloping face of granite, about four hundred feet high. 
The portage between the Lakes began at the Lower 
Falls, about one mile and a half from the Fort, and 
ran on the east side of the stream, to a point above 



62 Centennial Address 

the Upper Falls, called the Head of the Portage, or 
simply the Portage. On the north bank near the 
Lower Falls is a rocky height called afterwards Mount 
Hope. At the north end of the Lower Falls is the 
French Saw Mill, under the heights of Mount Hope, 
then some times called the *' Mill Heights." Just 
above this Mill is a bridge across the outlet. Between 
the branches of the Y at the extreme inner apex of the 
angle formed by them, is Mount Defiance, seven hun- 
dred feet high and commanding Fort Ticonderoga. 
Immediately opposite, within a thousand paces of the 
extreme point of the inner apex of the angle formed 
by the right branch and body of the Y, that is by the 
outlet of Lake George and Lake Champlain, stands the 
Fort. In front of the Fort, at a distance of thirteen 
hundred paces, and crossing all the higher part of 
the triangle, or of the promontory on which the Fort 
stands, are the French Lines. Before these occurred 
the Battle of Ticonderoga. The battle is now near at 
hand. It is necessary to notice dates and topography 
with exactness and it is fortunate that the Reports of 
Abercrombie and Montcalm, and the French printed 
account of the battle, when all taken together and com- 
pared, are clear upon three points. My account de- 
pends upon these reports throughout and upon other 
documents of equal trustworthiness. The whole terri- 
tory of the town of Ticonderoga, except a clearing 
near the Fort, a place for the Mill on the north side 
of the Lower Falls, and the roads for the Portage, is 



TiCONDEROGA 63 

covered with its primeval woods. The pines are yet 
unhewn on the mountains, the oaks in the valleys. 
Except for roads, and military posts, the whole 
Champlain valley in its lower part, has not heard the 
sound of an axe. 

Montcalm's preparations for the attack 

Montcalm arrived at Fort Ticonderoga, as has 
been stated, Tuesday, June 30. On Wednesday 
morning, July i, at daybreak he despatches M. 
Bourlamaque with the regiments of La Reine, 
Guienne and Beam, to occupy the head of the outlet. 
There seems to have been a camp on both sides of the 
stream, the principal one, however, on the east. Mont- 
calm himself, with the regiments of La Sarre, R. 
Rousillon, Languedoc and the second battalion of 
Beam, proceeds to the Lower Falls and encamps on 
both sides of it, his right wing resting on the heights 
of Mount Hope. 

The third Battalion of Berry was left to guard and 
serve the Fort. At the same time orders were given 
to Sieurs Pontleroy and Desandrouin, engineers, to 
reconnoitre the site of an entrenched camp which 
should cover the Fort. The troops carried their bag- 
gage and established their quarters at the new camps. 
"At 7 o'clock in the evening," writes an eyewitness in 
his journal, ** a detachment of 30 men was embarked 
on board two barges to cruise on the Lake." 



64 Centennial Address 

Thursday morning (July 2) at five o'clock two mus- 
ket shots were heard at the camp probably on the east 
of the head of the outlet. The regiment rushes to 
arms. Word, however, is sent in by the Captain of the 
guard that M. de Masdac, his Lieutenant had been 
attacked by a single Indian and that this was the sole 
cause of the disturbance. M. de Masdac had lost his 
hunting knife, and, while sent out with a picket of six 
men, being in search of this knife, he discovered an 
Indian's feather. Suspicious of the sign he promptly 
retired behind a tree, a movement which saved him 
from a shot fired at him that instant by an Indian 
scout " who was ready to pounce upon him tomahawk 
in hand." M. de Masdac returned the fire. The 
Indian escaped by falling on the ground and fled. 
M. de Masdac, having meanwhile called out " Help, 
volunteers " and thus gave the Indian some hint that 
there was a camp, or, at least, some aid at hand. M. 
de Bourlamaque in person went to reconnoitre the 
mountains on the left flank of the Camp. Ammunition 
is carted from the Fort to the Portage and two compa- 
nies of volunteers formed. Friday little occurs. The 
scouting barge returns but had discovered nothing. 
In the night the troops went to the Fort for provisions. 
" Timber and planks were collected for a bake house ; " 
Bourlamaque encamps twenty Indians in advance; a 
drunken Abenaki kills a comrade and flies. Saturday 
the waiting for the enemy continues. A scouting party 
is sent out that returns without having seen any trace 



TiCONDEROGA 65 

of the enemy. The record of Adjutant Malaetie says : 
'' Worked at an entrenchment at the head of the bridge 
which is over the Httle rapids. The M. de Montcahn 
came to visit the camp and went back in an hour after. 
M. de Raymond joined us with a detachment and was 
posted on the border of the rapids. At seven o'clock 
in the evening M. de Langy embarked with one hun- 
dred and seventy-eight volunteers to reconnoitre the 
enemy's movements." Sabbath is spent in waiting 
while preparations go on. The artillery furniture is 
transported ; baking is begun in the three ovens. At 
two o'clock in the afternon a white flag is seen hoisted 
on the mountain on the left of the Beam Camp, which 
is the signal agreed upon to denote that the guards, 
stationed on the look-out, discover some barges, or 
bateaux, on the Lake. One hour afterwards a party 
of M. de Langy's detachment returns to report " that, 
having started in the morning from the Bay of 
Ganaouske, he had been seen from Fort George, whence 
sixty barges were sent in pursuit, which followed 
pretty closely for a while and then fell of¥ and that 
Messrs. de Langy and La Roche had remained with 
their canoe three leagues from the Beam Camp, to 
watch them." Captain Trepezec, of the Beam regi- 
ments, " with three pickets of fifty-one men each, some 
volunteers and some militia, the whole numbering three 
hundred," are sent in consequence of this report, imme- 
diately by M. Bourlamaque, to a position near the 
Bald Mountain, as Rogers Rock was then called, " to 



66 Centennial Address 

observe the enemy's movements and oppose their land- 
ing." Another company is sent out at five o'clock to 
take a post between the western mountains and the 
Lake in order to support Trepezec's advance guard and 
" prevent the enemy establishing themselves there." 
Montcalm orders the troops of all the camps at the 
head of the outlet and at the Lower Falls to run to 
arms and to bivouac through the night. Dupeat's vol- 
unteers are sent to take up a position at Berney River 
(as Trout Brook was then called), " a stream," writes 
Montcalm, " which descends between the mountains 
wherewith this country is covered. The enemy might 
take us by the rear of these mountains," that is through 
Trout Brook valley, " and it was essential to be noti- 
fied thereof." All the troops are on the alert with 
orders to be ready at the first call. 

Thus France watches while England approaches 
over the Lake. 

abercrombie's approach 

Leaving Montcalm thus on guard at Ticonderoga, it 
is necessary now to turn to the English camp at the 
head of Lake George and to go back to Saturday even- 
ing. All the day of Saturday, July 4th, Abercrombie 
occupies, in finishing his preparation for embarking 
with his army. Sabbath morning, July 5th, the em- 
barkation takes place. The virgin waters of the Lake 
have never borne such a fleet; the unmolested forests 
of the mountains have never looked upon such an 



TiCONDEROGA (fj 

army. There are 367 regulars, officers, light Infantry, 
and rangers included, and 9,024 provincials, including 
officers and bateaux men. These are embarked in 
about 900 bateaux, and 135 whale boats. Huge trees 
had been felled and formed into rafts, and on these 
the horses and artillery were placed. The embarkation 
of the first brigade took place at daybreak ; of the last, 
at seven o'clock. There are some indications in the 
documents written by eye witnesses of the scene, that 
the morning was a beautiful one. The echoing of the 
bugles, the steady flash of the oars, the social jests of 
the men, among the beautiful islands, the crystal depths 
of the Lake, the grandeur of the mountains, the dewy 
green of the summer foliage, the bluecoats of the pro- 
vincials, the red of the regulars, the gleaming of bay- 
onets, the tossing of plumes, the nearly exact order of 
one thousand boats being rowed by fifteen thousand 
men, and the importance of the enterprise, made the 
scene one the most imposing of military spectacles. 
Outnumbering the enemy at least two to one and 
spurred on by the memory of the tragedy at Fort 
William Henry and by the hopes of the colonies and 
the pride of England, it is certain that officers and 
soldiers were not less elate with hope than inspired 
with determination. The flower of the young men of 
the early settlements was there. The sturdy veterans 
of the English army, rather haughtily looking down on 
the provincial troops, felt themselves the protectors 
of the honor of the King, for whom, two years pre- 



68 Centennial Address 

vious, General Johnson had named the Lake. There 
were regiments from Boston there ; Putnam with his 
tried band of old hunters called Rangers ; the Gover- 
nors of Massachusetts and New York had exerted 
themselves strenuously to raise their provincial force. 
Lord Howe, though second in rank, was really first in 
command, having been designated to be " the soul of 
the enterprise." The boats flash on all the forenoon, 
pass cove after cove, island after island, the crystal 
second atmosphere beneath them, the mountains 
around, hope and danger before. 

*'At five in the evening," writes Abercrombie, " we 
reached Sabbath Day Point, twenty-five miles down 
the Lake, where we halted till ten, then got under way 
again." The spot was famous for the defeat there, the 
year before, of Colonel Parker, who, out of a detach- 
ment of three hundred and fifty, lost three hundred. 
*' We beheld its melancholy remains," writes an eye 
witness, " both in the water and on the shore." It is 
probable that the bones of the unburied slain, birds 
and storms had scarcely yet made completely white. 
The halt had been made to wait for the three brigades 
and the artillery, which were in the rear. The whole 
came up about ten o'clock, according to one account, 
or at about eleven, according to another, and the thou- 
sand bateaux move on again, now under cover of the 
darkness. There are only about sixteen miles to pass 
before reaching the shores near the outlet. It is day- 
break of the short summer night when the boats are 



TiCONDEROGA 69 

within four miles of the French advance post. A 
New York regiment and a party of the Jerseys cau- 
tiously rowed toward the east shore to a point near 
the French camp. The first brigade and the principal 
portion of the fleet row toward the little cove, not far 
above the present steamboat landing from Lake George 
at Ticonderoga, just west of Prisoners Island, and now 
called Howe's Landing. Every moment they expect 
a shot from an ambuscade. The boats ground in the 
shallow water, the troops of the first brigade disem- 
bark and wade ashore. It is eight o'clock. Not a 
solitary man opposes and the whole brigade is landed. 
On the east shore the French troops discover the 
Jersey and New York regiments tardily and fire on 
them, but at a distance of six hundred paces and, 
therefore, without effect. The French at this Camp 
leave the greater part of their baggage, tents, and pro- 
visions. The Provincial boys dispose of these at their 
mercy. Thus Abercrombie disembarks without use 
for his covering artillery. There appear to have been 
two roads from the landing places to the Fort, one on 
the west and one on the east side of the outlet. The 
one on the east was, of course, the principal one as it 
was the shorter and as the ground was broken by 
ravines. The one on the west, if it existed at all, 
appears to have been a very rude affair, and cut 
through a forest, in which it is repeatedly said by eye 
witnesses, no one could make his way even from the 
landing to the Fort without guides. The forest along 



yo Centennial Address 

the outlet must have been enormously dense and the 
thickets in the ravines nearly impenetrable. Even if 
there were a road, it was of course inadmissible for the 
whole army to be placed in it, for its slow length, 
dragged out to a distance of a mile or two, would 
offer a ruinous exposure to a flank attack. 

After the first brigade is landed, a reconnoitering 
party is sent out, the way found clear, and the whole 
army landed. " The troops," says Abercrombie, " were 
formed in four columns, regulars in the center, and 
provincials on the flanks." The columns, of course, 
moved lengthwise through the woods. " The right 
center column " was commanded by Howe. This 
young nobleman was the idol of the army. Inde- 
pendent of fashion, he had accommodated himself and 
regiment to the nature of the service they had to 
undergo by cutting off his hair and fashioning his 
clothes for activity. " Keep back," said Putnam to 
Howe, who wished to be at the head of the Rangers, 
as they neared the place of expected conflict ; '' keep 
back, my lord ; you are the idol and soul of the army 
and my life is worth but little." " Putnam," was 
Howe's answer, " your life is as dear to you as mine 
is to me. I am determined to go." This was but an 
instance of the bravery and generosity which, with his 
rank and talents, had given him almost unlimited 
influence with the soldiers. The four columns meet 
first a French advance guard on the west side of the 
outlet. " This," Abercrombie writes, " was composed 



TiCONDEROGA 7I 

of one battalion, posted in a logged camp which, upon 
our approach, they deserted, first setting a fire to their 
tents and destroying every thing they could; but as 
their retreat was very precipitate, they left several 
things behind which they had not time either to burn 
or to carry off. In this camp we likewise found one 
prisoner and a dead man." The first object of the 
advance was to take possession of what was then 
called the " Mill Heights," and now called Mount Hope 
on the north side of the Lower Falls. 

" The army in the foregoing order," says Abercrom- 
bie, " continued their march through the wood, on the 
west side, with a design to invest Ticonderoga; the 
woods being very thick, impassable with regularity to 
such a body of men, and the guides unskilful, the 
troops were bewildered and the columns broke falling 
in one upon another." It was a hot July day of 
buzzing flies and sweltering leaves. The columns 
which started from Howe's Landing at two o'clock 
had progressed but slowly through the dense forest, 
and at four o'clock had come to a hill, which an eye 
witness described as " half way between the landing 
place and the Mill " at the Lower Falls. On this spot, 
which must be near the ridge immediately southwest 
of the point where Trout Brook empties into the outlet 
of Lake George, they meet three hundred and fifty 
French soldiers. These were Trepezec's detachment 
returning from their post near Bald mountain. 
They had seen the fleet of boats pass, had counted 



72 Centennial Address 

seven hundred bateaux or the first two brigades at 
sight of which they attempted to return to oppose the 
landing of the English but had gone astray and, at the 
moment when Abercrombie's Rangers were firing upon 
them, were still unable to discover where they were. 
'*At the first volley they fired," says a letter written 
by a member of Abercrombie's Army, and preserved 
in the Pennsylvania Archives, " They killed Lord Howe 
and Lieut. Cumberfort. Lord Howe was at the head 
of the Rangers notwithstanding all the remonstrances 
made him; the moment the fire was received in front 
panic seized our soldiers ; entire regiments flung them- 
selves one atop of the other and even the General 
narrowly escaped being dragged off in the confusion 
by the fugitives. In vain did the ofiicers cry out 
and offer opposition ; nothing could stop them ; mean- 
while our brave Rangers defended themselves, two 
hundred against three hundred and fifty of the enemy, 
up to the time they were reinforced. The enemy was 
surrounded and one Captain, three Lieutenants, with 
one hundred and seventy soldiers were taken pris- 
oners ; some officers attempted to save themselves in 
the river by swimming, but they were killed so that 
it is believed not one escaped. We lost Lord Howe, 
Lieut. Cumberfort, and eight men, six wounded. I 
am certain, had the enemy had three or four hundred 
Indians with them at the beginning of this reconnoitre, 
they would have beaten us and driven us to our 
bateaux. 'Tis a singular case that three hundred and 



TiCONDEROGA 73 

fifty men drove and threw into considerable confusion 
about eleven thousand." A stranger fact had oc- 
curred the year before at Braddock's defeat. It was 
the Indian mode of warfare, mastered apparently by 
Trepezec's division, startling the inexperience of the 
English regulars accustomed to fight behind breast- 
works or in the open field and not behind trees. 

" This small success," writes Abercrombic, in 
noticing the afifair, " cost us very dear, not as to the 
loss of numbers, for we had only two officers killed, but 
as to the consequence, Lord Howe being the first man 
that fell in this skirmish ; and, as he was very de- 
servedly beloved and respected throughout tne whole 
army, it is easy to conceive the grief and consterna- 
tion his untimely fall occasioned; for my part, I 
cannot help owning, that I felt it most heavily and 
lament him as sincerely." 

Thus passed from earth George Augustus Howe, 
Lord Viscount in the peerage of England, a man 
of whom some historical student has said walking 
past the spot where he fell, that had he lived his 
great popularity at home and in the colonies might 
have brought about a settlement of grievances so that 
but for what occurred on this little ridge of the old 
French and Indian war ground there might have 
been no Revolution. This speculation is undoubtedly 
extravagant ; " yet in him, the soul of the army seemed 
to expire." Massachusetts, at an expense of some 
eleven hundred dollars, erected a monument to his 



74 Centennial Address 

memory in .Westminster Abbey and Ticonderoga has 
yet to rear one on the spot where he fell.* He was 
only thirty-four years of age. 

Sunday night the English soldiers had been on the 
water and had little sleep. Monday they had been 
constantly on foot. Monday night they were under 
arms. They had left their provisions at the landing 
place in beginning Monday's march in order to make 
more easily the passage through the woods. They 
had been confused by the afternoon skirmish. Above 
all they were overcome with grief and consternation 
at the death of Howe. For all these reasons Aber- 
crombie commits the first of the faults of his attack 
on Ticonderoga by ordering a return of the troops to 



*In 1878 Joseph Cook himself erected a marble tablet 
where Trout Brook flows into the outlet of Lake George. 
Dean Stanley of Westminster Abbey made a historic 
pilgrimage to this spot on his last visit to America, The 
monument was dedicated August 29, 1878, with speeches 
and appropriate ceremonies in the presence of five hundred 
persons. 

The inscription is as follows : 

" Near this Spot 

Fell 

July 6th. 1758, 

In a skirmish preceding 

Abercrombie's Defeat i 

By Montcalm 

Lord 

George Augustus 

Howe 

Aged 34. 

Massachusetts erected a monument to him 

in Westminster Abbey. 

Ticonderoga places here this Memorial." 



TiCONDEROGA 75 

the landing place. They arrive there at eight o'clock 
Tuesday morning and remain unemployed, with the 
exception of a few companies, the whole day. "About 
eleven in the forenoon," writes Abercrombie, " I sent 
off Lieut. Col. Bradstreet — with the 44th Regiment, 
six companies of the first battalion of Royal Ameri- 
cans, the bateaux men and a body of Rangers and 
Provincials, to take possession of the Saw Mill, within 
two miles of Ticonderf^ga, which he soon effected, 
as the enemy who were posted there, after destroying 
the Mill and breaking down their bridge had retired 
some time before. Lieut. Col. Bradstreet, having laid 
another bridge across, and having sent me notice of his 
being in possession of that ground, I accordingly 
marched thither with the troops and we took up our 
quarters there that night." Thus Abercrombie writes. 
It is Tuesday night. He is at Mount Hope. On the 
morrow comes the battle. 

EVE OF THE BATTLE 

It is necessary now to trace the action of Montcalm 
from the point where it was left. On Sabbath night, 
at one o'clock in the morning, a dozen shots had been 
heard in the direction of the French advance post. 
The brigade immediately ran to arms but word was 
soon brought in that the shots were only from a 
corporal guard which the English had corralled and 
endeavored to make prisoners but who had freed them- 
selves with the bayonet. At daylight the signal of the 



76 Centennial Address 

flag hoisted and lowered at the lookout on the moun- 
tain is frequent, " many barges were seen crossing 
from the west to the east side of the Lake in search 
apparently of a fit place for a landing." The scout- 
ing barge returns and reports that it has seen fifteen 
hundred bateaux approaching. The news of the pres- 
ence of the enemy had been sent to Montcalm and 
he immediately orders the engineers, Sieurs Pontle- 
roy and Desandrouin, to trace out on the height of 
ground in front of Carillon the entrenchment en abattis 
for which they had already reconnoitered. The third 
battalion of Berry which had been left at the Fort, 
is ordered to work at this entrenchment under its 
colors. Bourlamaque at the Portage strikes his tents 
and gives orders for the baggage to be removed. At 
eight o'clock his brigades commence their retreat. 
He remains behind with a rear guard to receive news 
of M. de Trepezec but hears none, and orders some 
shots to be fired on the approaching barges and then 
follows on the retreat. Montcalm awaits him with 
the Royal Rousillon and first battalion of Berry drawn 
up in order of Battle on the high ground on the right 
bank of the outlet at the Lower Falls near where the 
eastern part of the lower village now stands. The 
five battalions unite, cross the outlet, destroy the 
bridges, one of which was just above the Lower Falls, 
and with the battalions of La Sarre and Languedoc 
occupy the height of Mount Hope. Bateaux are sent 
for to Carillon to carry the baggage which was em- 



TiCONDEROGA 77 

barrassing the soldiers. At four o'clock shots are 
heard in the direction of Trout Brook which are 
thought to be fired at M. Trepezec's division. Fifteen 
minutes of suspense elapse. Some soldiers are seen 
wading in the river which prove to be those of Trepe- 
zec's division. M. de Trepezec himself soon arrives 
" Mortally wounded." He reports " that he had lost his 
way through the fault of his guide and that wishing 
to reach the Falls he had got into the midst of a con- 
siderable party of the enemy; that after having de- 
fended himself for some time, fifty or sixty men 
escaped but the remainder were killed, taken or 
drowned." He had retired to Mount Hope by Monday 
afternoon. At six o'clock in the evening M. Dupeat 
comes with intelligence that the enemy was approach- 
ing Berney River — Trout Brook — with the apparent 
intention of throwing a bridge across it. Montcalm 
orders him to retreat, and himself soon after six o'clock 
begins retiring toward the heights immediately in 
front of the Fort. The retreat is made across the 
gorges and the plains on the north side of the creek 
between Mount Hope and the old French Lines. A 
halt is made every fifty paces. At sundown, or about 
seven o'clock, the army arrives at the entrance of the 
clearing in front of Carillon and encamp in order of 
battle. The night is passed in bivouac. It is Monday. 
Tuesday morning, at daybreak, the drum beats 
la generale. Three brigades post themselves at the 
entrance of the woods, and work under their colors 



78 Centennial Address 

all day, upon an abattis composed of felled trees, 
their branches sharpened and pointing upwards. Some 
pickets are placed in front of the workmen and these 
exchange shots all the day with the pickets of Aber- 
crombie. At five o'clock in the afternoon the ground, 
covered by the entrenchment, is divided exactly between 
each wheelbarrow and makes 127 paces each. Tents 
are erected behind the abattis and soup boiled. Orders 
are given to the troops to sleep in bivouac; and the 
guards are directed to line the abattis, patrol fre- 
quently outside and keep the fires burning. Between 
six and seven o'clock the worn battalions and their 
anxious commander are gratified with an event they 
had long desired. The detachment designed for the 
expedition against Schenectady arrives, and during 
the night Chevalier de Levis himself comes in. 

DAY OF BATTLE JULY 8, 1 758 

Wednesday morning, July 8, the drum beats, the 
generale long before day. This is the day of the battle. 
It is necessary now to notice accurately the dispo- 
sition of the French entrenchment and forces. The 
entrenchment laid out by Pontleroy and Desandrouin 
is 1300 paces from the Fort. Its left rests on an 
escarpment 120 paces from the left bank of the outlet, 
and perhaps 60 or 80 feet above the surface of the 
stream. The center follows the sinuosities of the 
ground keeping on the highest part of the land across 
the whole elevated part of the promontory. It is 



TiCONDEROGA 79 

constructed full of angles, so that its several parts 
skilfully flank each other. The abattis, already men- 
tioned, extends about 60 paces in front of the entrench- 
ment. It is too commonly supposed that these fatal 
lines when the French fought here were, as now, of 
earth. On the contrary the entrenchment itself is 
composed of trees laid one on the other lengthwise 
with the ends locked together, and pierced with two 
rows of loop holes. On the top are placed bags of 
earth, and between each two of these, is a space which 
is used as a loop hole. Arrangement is thus made 
for a triple fire, thrice as effective as that from an 
ordinary breastwork. On the left in front of an open- 
ing, there was an abattis, and behind it, six pieces of 
cannon to batter it and the outlet of the Lake. The 
right bends about so as to flank the center, and itself 
rests on an acclivity, only a little less steep than the 
one on the left. Between this height and the Lake 
is a plain covered with a forest then almost untouched 
though the woods had been cleared up to a space 
near to this part of the field. Here a flank entrench- 
ment is made, which it was intended to support by four 
pieces of cannon, but this latter arrangement is not 
completed till after the action. Along the whole 
entrenchment all the Battalions, but the second of 
Berry, are placed. This Battalion is to guard the 
Fort and bring up ammunition during the action. 
Bernard and Dupeat's volunteers guard the opening 
toward the river of the Falls. On the left are the 



8o Centennial Address 

Battalions of La Sarre and Languedoc and the two 
pickets which had arrived the preceding evening. The 
first Battahon of Berry, the Royal Rousillon, and the 
remainder of the pickets of Chevalier de Levis occu- 
pied the center. La Reign, Beam, and Guienne defend 
the right. The Canadian and Colonial troops are 
posted on the plain between the right and the Lake. 
A company of Grenadiers, pickets and reserve, was 
posted behind each Battalion. Chevalier de Levis 
commanded the right. Bourlamaque the left. Mont- 
calm the center. The cannon of the Fort are turned 
toward the plain to meet any attack the enemy may 
make there and toward the outlet to oppose their 
landing. Thus disposed the French army awaits the 
English, vigorously working nevertheless, to the last 
moment to perfect its abattis. 

It is Wednesday morning. We return now to Aber- 
crombie's camp at Mount Hope. At an early hour 
Abercrombie sends Mr. Clerk, the engineer, across 
the outlet to reconnoitre the enemy's position from the 
heights, since called, Mount Defiance. It is one of the 
ways in which the action of Providence is displayed in 
human affairs that almost never has a great battle 
taken place the result of which did not depend upon 
some little circumstance unforeseen and uncontrolled 
by mortal skill. A little boy in a forest of Germany 
pointing to the shorter of two roads to Bliicher, 
hastening to aid Wellington, defeats Bonaparte. An 
engineer, in the early morning, standing among the 



TiCONDEROGA 8l 

pines of Mount Defiance and having the French abat- 
tis hid from his view by the distance and the trees, 
reports that the French works are pregnable and de- 
termines the result of Abercrombie's enterprise. Mr. 
Clerk reports that the French works if attacked before 
their finish, can be carried, and Abercrombie imme- 
diately sets his army in motion. The prominent 
reason for Abercrombie's despatch, is the report of 
the prisoners that Montcalm daily expected a reen- 
forcement of several thousand men under Chevalier 
de Levis. The Rangers, Light Infantry, and the right 
wing of the Provincials were to post themselves in a 
line out of cannon shot of the entrenchment and ex- 
tending across the whole promontory to Lake Cham- 
plain. The regular troops, destined for the attack on 
the entrenchments, were to form on their rear. The 
attack was to be begun on the pickets : these were to 
be sustained by the Grenadiers, and they by the 
Battalions. " The whole were ordered," writes Aber- 
crombie, *' to march up briskly, rush upon the enemy's 
fire, and not to give theirs until they were within the 
enemy's breastwork." 

The French from their entrenchments, at nine o'clock 
discover a body of troops on the heights across the 
outlet and receive a few shots from them which the 
distance renders inefifective and to which they do not 
reply. 

There is now an almost awful pause for nearly four 
hours, the silence which precedes a battle being more 



82 Centennial Address 

terrible than the thunders which accompany it. The 
French work at their abattis, and the silence of arms 
continues. At half past twelve the storm is let loose. 
The battle begins. As the regiments of La Reine and 
Beam were about to construct epaulments on the 
French left to protect their entrenchments from the 
opposite heights of Mount Defiance, a heavy firing 
is heard on the left, " a moment after at the center 
and next at the right." The French Grenadiers, Vol- 
unteers and advanced guards, fall back in good order, 
without losing a man, and reenter the Hues. The dis- 
charge of a cannon from the Fort, a signal agreed 
upon to announce the arrival of the enemy, brings 
every soldier to his post. The English defile against 
the entrenchment in four columns. The left was first 
attacked by two columns. One of these endeavoring 
to take the entrenchment found itself under the fire 
of the Battalion of La Sarre. The other directed its 
efforts against an angle between Languedoc and Berry. 
The center column, where the Royal Rousillon was 
posted, was attacked almost at the same time by a 
third column, whilst a fourth attacked the right be- 
tween Beam and La Reine. The different columns 
were intermixed with their Light Infantry and best 
marksmen, who under cover of the two, directed upon 
the French a most murderous fire. Abercrombie had 
not entirely forgotten his artillery. Two rafts had 
been constructed in the morning at the Lower Falls 
which received, each, two six pounders. At one 



TiCONDEROGA 83 

o'clock, when the roar of musketry on the height 
announced that the French were engaged, these rafts 
proceed down the outlet for the purpose of flanking 
the entrenchment and exposing it to an enfilading 
fire. As soon as the rafts were in the proper position, 
the Fort opens upon them with cannon. Bernard and 
Dupeat's Volunteers open upon them at the same time, 
from the height. One raft is sunk, and the other 
retreats back to the Falls. 

Meanwhile, Abercrombie's generals, finding the 
troops thrown into confusion by the abattis and 
the entrenchment impregnable, send word to him, 
an hour after the engagement commenced, that 
the best that can be done is to withdraw from 
before the lines. Abercrombie is at the Saw 
Mill at the Lower Falls. He returns no posi- 
tive answer, but orders the troops to advance. 
They are led to the charge but in vain. The French, 
at the port holes of their wooden breastworks, were 
invisible ; *' Nothing was to be seen of them but a 
small bit of their caps. Every man," writes an officer 
of Abercrombie's army, " who wished to approach 
nearer than fifteen paces was irreparably dead." The 
old leaves are plowed up; young saplings are bent 
and cut, soldiers reel, ranks open ; death snatches one 
here and there and the ranks close again. On the 
wooden walls of the entrenchment partially hid in a 
cloud of smoke, English bullets almost harmlessly rain. 
Out of that entrenchment, springs a thrice sheeted 



84 Centennial Address 

tongue of fire and leaden hail. Each drop on either 
side hums its minstrelsy of blood, a stinging piercing 
sound heard above the thunders of the war cloud. 
Exposed, not only to a galling fire in front but a flank 
fire on the side from the Canadians on the plain, the 
English left, screaming with rage, leap among the 
branches and rave and hack and hew with their broad 
swords. " That column," says Montcalm, " consist- 
ing of English Grenadiers and Scotch Highlanders, 
continued charging for three hours without retreating 
or breaking and several were killed within fifty paces 
of our abattis." Combined movements are made and 
column aids column. ''About five o'clock," says Mont- 
calm, " the column that vigorously attacked Royal 
Rousillon, fell on the angle defended by Guienne and 
on the left of Beam ; the column which had attacked 
the right flung itself also against the same point, so 
that the danger became imminent there. Chevalier de 
Levis repaired thither with some troops from the right 
where the enemy was no longer seriously firing ; Mont- 
calm ran thither also with some of the rescued, and 
the enemy experienced a resistance which finally abated 
their ardor." 

The hot afternoon sun of July sinks in the heavens, 
the war cloud partially shutting out its heat from the 
combatants. At four o'clock Bourlamaque is dan- 
gerously wounded, but the attention of Montcalm and 
of Messrs. de Senezergues and Prevot, Lieutenant 
Colonels of La Sarre and Languedoc, supply his place. 



TiCONDEROGA 85 

After the failure of the combined attack on the angle 
defended by Guienne and Beam, the EngHsh fire for a 
little slackened. Abercrombie, secure in his retreat at 
the Saw Mill, orders another advance. It is made about 
six o'clock. The green bark of the freshly fallen trees 
of the abattis grows red with blood. Scores are mowed 
down at every discharge from the triple row of French 
muskets. The dying and wounded, borne far to the 
rear, lie bleeding under shadows of the forest. Blood 
oozes from two thousand dying and mangled forms 
till it forms a rill. The outlet of the Lake has its 
lilies turned strangely purple ; the sensitive yellow 
leaves of the corolla are blotched and stained. It is 
blood from the battle field. '' The justice is due them," 
writes Montcalm, '' to say that they have attacked us 
with a most determined obstinacy. It is not usual 
that such would be the case with entrenchments for 
seven consecutive hours." 

RETREAT OF ABERCROMBIE's ARMY 

At last the bugle sounds. Refrain. The sun is 
setting. It is seven o'clock. The best marksmen are 
put in the English rear to cover the retreat till night- 
fall shall arrive. The French cease firing. The 
wounded groan as they are taken up to be borne back 
to their morning camp. Many are deserted at the 
entrenchment, some of whom offer opposition next 
morning to the French patrolers and are killed by 
them. '' We are sure," writes Dorel, " of two thousand 



86 Centennial Address 

corpses in front of our abattis." The French state 
that the EngUsh loss was between four and five thou- 
sand. Abercrombie reports that 551 were killed, 1356 
wounded. Montcalm admits a loss of 450 killed and 
wounded together, 38 of whom were officers. Stained 
and sore and panic struck, the retreating columns 
move on in the light of the fading day. In stranger 
contrast with the human woe, nature was clear as 
ever. Trout Brook valley rolled full of foliage of 
beech and maple, odorous pine and song of birds, all 
undisturbed by the terror of that day. The deer 
drank at the laughing rivulets, or standing on the 
mountain crags snuffed the sulphurous taint of battle 
in the pure air of the valley cooled by the twilight 
breeze. But the scene was solemn forever as one 
from which in one day two thousand souls had passed 
to the judgment. 

But the English army feel as if pursued. Tramp, 
tramp, go the heavy regiments, loaded with defeated 
and dying comrades along the banks of the Sounding 
Waters. They abandon wounded, provisions, ammu- 
nition, and burn three boats at the lower camp. The 
way from the lines to the Lake is literally strewn 
with corpses. "A detachment which went out on the 
loth," says Doreil, " discovered all these on the road, 
and nearly five hundred dead bodies pushed on one 
side and another." " The darkness of the night, the ex- 
haustion and small number of our troops ; the enemy's 
forces, which, despite their defeat, were still infinitely 



TiCONDEROGA 87 

superior to ours; the nature of these woods in which 
it was impossible without Indians, to engage an army, 
that had four or five hundred of them; several en- 
trenchments thrown up en echelons from the field of 
battle to their camp ; such," says Montcalm, " were 
the obstacles which prevented us pursuing the enemy 
on their retreat." 

The defeated army having rushed to its landing, 
hastily embarks with the few prisoners and the many 
wounded. Groans now for bugle notes ; disappoint- 
ment and disaster now in place of anticipations of 
victory. A recoil of surprise and horror now for the 
English Colonies, people and government instead of a 
burst of joy. Marbles in Westminster Abbey now 
and crape and mourning, instead of glory from the 
fatal Ticonderoga lines. Not as they came indeed, 
did that proud armament return. Providence intended 
to train yet further the Colonial Army for the war 
of Independence, and the plan of history was advanc- 
ing. Such was the battle of Ticonderoga, July 
8th, 1758. 

CAPTURE OF FORT BY AMHERST, 1 759 

General Amherst took the Fort next year. He was 
not Abercrombie. He invested it employing starva- 
tion as his weapon. On the fourth day Bourlamaque 
who was in charge, Montcalm having gone to meet 
Wolfe at Quebec, abandoned the Fort leaving its 
woodworks on fire. He retreated to Crown Point 



88 Centennial Address 

and afterwards to Canada. Thus the grey promontory 
was won by skill without the loss of a man. Am- 
herst built boats at Ticonderoga and at Crown 
Point for invading the region of Montreal. 
After a delay of three months the little fleet proceeded 
northward, but was forced back by an autumnal tem- 
pest. The main body of the army remained at Ticon- 
deroga, while a portion of the boats attacked the 
French fleet near Plattsburgh. This first naval con- 
flict on Lake Champlain was with gun boats built at 
Ticonderoga and Crown Point. At the latter place 
a new fort was erected at the expense of ten thousand 
dollars and that at Ticonderoga was improved on an 
imposing scale. 

Soon from Quebec came the news of Wolfe's suc- 
cess, and with it New France was doomed. The plan 
had been for Amherst and Prideaux to meet at Mon- 
treal, take it and proceed to aid Wolfe, but the latter 
had not needed their aid. In the next year Montreal 
capitulated and the last hope of French power is lost. 
The treaty gave to England all that France had or 
ought to have possessed, east of the Mississippi. 
French political influence was substantially driven from 
the New World. One can but pause over the down- 
fall of the schemes of the French in admiration of 
their splendor and of the activity which pushed their 
discoveries and Forts across the habitable length of 
the Continent. The overthrow of so much devotion and 
energy is contemplated with an irresistible mournful- 



TiCONDEROGA 89 

ness. But the Plan of Providence was advancing. 
When the French flag went down at Quebec, on every 
frontier the common schools stood firmer and every 
Bible more easily unloosed its clasps. The words 
*' They fly, they fly " were not uttered of the French 
alone ; unconsciously they were spoken of spirits in 
the air of Powers and Principalities that contended for 
the Continent, but then fluttered in wind, shaken off, 
ready to depart for a season. The providential pur- 
pose of the French and Indian war, was to place an 
open Bible in the hands of the young Continent. 

PARTITION OF TICONDEROGA LANDS 

The land in the vicinity of Ticonderoga had 
attracted, by its richness, the attention of the soldiers 
and ofiicers who were interested in the formation of 
new settlements, and the Duke of Richmond was offi- 
cially recommended to settle near the place. It seems 
to be not generally known that Ticonderoga narrowly 
escaped being organized as a French Lordship. There 
is a section of the Documentary History of the State 
containing papers relating to French seigniories on 
Lake Champlain. From these it appears that a large 
portion of the south part of the present town of 
Crown Point and nearly the whole of what is now 
the town of Ticonderoga had been granted by Gover- 
nor Vaudreuil in 1758 to M. Michel Cartier de 
Lotbiniere as a Lordship. This is the same Lotbiniere 
who laid out the French Fort of Carillon. There is 



90 Centennial Address 

a map accompanying the papers which shows the 
French grants on Lake Champlain. That of Lotbiniere 
is laid down clearly. The boundary begins near the 
present steamboat Landing from Lake George and 
runs nearly due west fifteen miles, then due north 
nearly twelve miles, then east fifteen miles, and reaches 
Lake Champlain just north of Putnam's Creek. This 
tract was called the seigniory or Lordship of Allain- 
ville. He obtained another seigniory on the Vermont 
shore just opposite Fort Crown Point, embrac- 
ing the present towns of Panton, Addison, and 
Bridport, in Addison county, Vermont and which 
was named Hocquart. When the Treaty of 
Peace was made in 1763, it was, of course, 
stipulated that the Canadian subjects who had 
held grants under the French King, should retain 
all their rights and privileges under the English King, 
wherever the lands granted were not properly within 
the dominion which had rightfully belonged to the 
English. The fate of the French seigniories on Lake 
Champlain gave to their grantees not a little anxiety. 
It turned upon the essential termination of what were 
the northern bounds of the Iroquois nation. Over 
all the lands of this confederacy France had acknowl- 
edged the protectorate of England. There was much 
correspondence between the Governor of New York 
and the Board of Trade upon this point. The question 
was between the French claimants and the reduced 
officers and soldiers to whom the lands on both sides 



TiCONDEROGA 9I 

of Champlain had begun to be granted, immediately 
after the peace, by the State of New York. These 
claims overlapped. If the English veterans of the 
French and Indian war were to be ejected, many of 
them would be impoverished. If, on the other hand, 
the French claimants were to be driven out of all their 
grants south of the St. Lawrence, it was possible 
that discontent might arise in Canada prejudicial to 
the King's interest. Lotbiniere early pressed his 
claim. He went to London for the purpose and per- 
sonally appeared before the Board of Trade. Other 
claimants under the French Grants appeared with 
him. Lord Dartmouth was unwilling to take the 
ground that the dominions of the Iroquois had ex- 
tended to the St. Lawrence. Governor Tryon of New 
York, replied by forwarding documents to England in 
proof that such really was their extent at least that the 
whole province of New York was in their former terri- 
tory. All the country to the southward of the river St. 
Lawrence," he writes in a letter to Lord Dartmouth, 
dated at New York, January 5, 1773, "originally 
belonged to the Five Nations or Iroquois and, as such, 
it is described in the above-mentioned and other 
ancient maps and particularly Lake Champlain is there 
called * Mere des Iroquois,' Sorel River which leads 
from the Lake into the River St. Lawrence, 'River 
des Iroquois,' and the tract on the east side of the 
Lake Giocoisia." The question commanded the atten- 
tion of some of the best talent of the times. It is a 



92 Centennial Address 

part of the historical treasure of the inhabitants of 
Champlain valley to know that no less a man than 
Edmund Burke was employed to defend these early 
grants, and that the beginning of pioneer civilization 
here thus owes something to his ability and learning. 
That the lands of the Iroquois extended northward 
at least as far as Crown Point seems never to have 
been doubted. An Instruction was given as early as 
July 5th, 1769, to the Governor of New York from 
the King, to grant no lands to the northward of that 
Fort, of lands claimed under Grants, until the petition 
for such Grants had been forwarded to one of the 
principal British Secretaries of State and the Royal 
approbation thereof had been signified. But Lord 
Dartmouth finally was induced to admit Governor 
Tryon's claim that the dominion of the Iroquois had 
embraced the whole of Lake Champlain or, at least, 
of the province of New York as bounded at the time 
by about the latitude of 45 degrees. Lotbiniere's 
claim was fully considered. He advocated it per- 
sistently and with ability. It was finally rejected. 
May 25, 1775. The reasons for this step were three. 
First, the land lay *' south of Crown Point," and hence 
was plainly within the territory of the Iroquois which 
France had no right to grant ; second, it was '' stated 
to have been granted to him at a time, that is in 1758, 
when his Majesty's armies had penetrated into and 
occasionally possessed themselves of the country 
between Lake George and Crown Point ; " third, there 



TiCONDEROGA 93 

was '' no evidence of the Grants having been ratified 
by the Crown of France, or registered within the 
Colony." Thus Ticonderoga escaped becoming a 
French Lordship. For the Seigniory of Hocquart, 
which had been largely granted to reduced British 
soldiers, it was recommended that M. Lotbiniere upon 
condition of relinquishing it, be compensated by the 
Grant of the same amount of land, of equivalent value, 
in the Province of Quebec. 

It is sometimes doubted whether there was not a 
French settlement at Ticonderoga previous to the 
close of the French and Indian war in 1763. It has 
been suggested that possibly the Centennial of the 
town should come earlier than in 1864. Upon this 
point the papers concerning the French seigniories on 
Lake Champlain in the first volume of the documen- 
tary history of New York, the reports of Sir William 
Johnson's scouts in the first volume, afford definite 
information. There was some settlement near the 
Fort at Crown Point previous to the close of the war 
in 1763, though it appears to have existed almost 
purely for military purposes. But the terror of the 
English army disturbed even this settlement at Crown 
Point. " The English," writes Governor Vaudreuil, 
as early as July 4, 1755, *' appear always to have de- 
sign on Fort Frederick, and to make arrangements 
with that view at Orange (Albany). Their move- 
ments have so frightened the settlers whose lands are 
without the Fort, that they have abandoned them." 



94 Centennial Address 

The chief portion, however, of these settlements here 
were on the opposite of the Lake at Chimney Point. 
Professor Kahii, a Swedish traveler, who visited the 
region in 1749 mentions a small church and orchard at 
Chimney Point. But Putnam mentions in 1766 a 
" small village about half a mile from the Fort to 
the southward." He slept on one occasion near some 
houses on the Lake in a barn well filled with wheat. 
On another he killed all the cattle, hogs and horses 
belonging to the "small village, about fifty in number" 
and set it on fire. In his reports to Johnson he several 
times speaks of this " village " at Crown Point. There 
are, moreover, ruins there yet or were recently visible, 
of an old French settlement south of the Fort. But 
Putnam, who scouted from the head of Lake George 
about Ticonderoga as much as about Crown Point 
never mentions a village or settlement as existing as 
near the former place. He once speaks of a barn, but 
the connection renders it unnecessary to suppose this 
more than an outhouse of the Fort. On the minute 
map of the battle of Ticonderoga in 1758 given by 
Mante in his history and which includes the whole 
field of the buildings of that year near the Lower Falls, 
there are no outhouses except immediately near the 
Fort. There is a garden laid down east of the Fort 
and close under its wall, but nothing more. In the 
reports of the battle there is no mention of any build- 
ings in the tract of the march, as there would probably 
have been had any existed, as they would have been 



TiCONDEROGA 95 

used as points of support for the army. No ruins of 
French settlement have been found. No tradition 
comes down of the existence of a single French cabin. 
There was, indeed, a Saw Mill on the north side of the 
Lower Falls, in 1758, as is well known from its being 
repeatedly mentioned as a point of rest for Montcalm's 
and Abercrombie's armies. Its purpose was purely 
military. The lines of Forts, St. Frederick, Carillon, 
and the French advance posts at the head of the Lake 
George outlet as well as their bateaux and flotilla on 
both Lakes, depended largely on it for construction and 
repairs. Lotbiniere, indeed, makes a claim that his 
seigniories of Allainville, embracing Ticonderoga and 
granted in 1758, were " settled." Probably he states 
the circumstances so that they appear as strongly in 
his favor as the case would permit. As an engineer 
at Fort Ticonderoga he could speak too from personal 
observation. But all he says is, to put his two seigni- 
ories together, the seigniory of Hocquart and that of 
Allainville, and make, concerning them both this 
statement : "As to the validity of my titles at the time 
of the reduction of the country, let but a single glance 
be direced to these two seigniories ; the frequent clear- 
ances to be seen there which cannot yet have disap- 
peared ; the various settlements, the wrecks of which 
cannot have been swept away by the misfortunes in- 
separable from a period of war ; these will prove incon- 
testably that nothing can oppose their entire effect." 
No one doubts that there were " clearances " and 



96 Centennial Address 

" settlements " that might be barely worthy of the 
title on the seigniory Hocquart. Kalm saw them. But 
the language is indefinite. From the very misfortunes 
of war, to which he alludes, no French settlements in 
Ticonderoga could be permanent. The seigniory of 
Allainville was granted in 1758. In that very year 
Abercrombie cooped Montcalm up to the promontory 
behind the French lines, holding for the time previous 
to his own defeat all the rest of the town. No mention 
is made of any French settlements being ravaged or 
burned. The very next year Amherst drove the French 
out entirely. This very consideration, that Allainville 
was granted so late, and that the English armies were, 
at the time, penetrating into the territory occupied by 
it, was one of the reasons given by the Board of Trade 
for disallowing the French claim. Finally, there is 
the testimony of the early English Grantees on the 
point. It was a matter to which attention was closely 
directed. But the conclusive evidence against the 
theory of a French settlement in Ticonderoga previous 
to the close of the French and Indian war is found in 
a letter of Governor Tryon of New York to Lord 
Dartmouth and the Board of Trade dated January 5, 
1773. The language is unusually explicit. It is as 
follows : '* I have frequently been informed by those 
on whom I could depend, that when the French on 
the approach of Sir Jeffrey Amherst in 1759, abandoned 
Crown Point, there were found no ancient possessions, 
nor any improvements worthy of . consideration, on 



TiCONDEROGA 97 

either side of the Lake. The chief were in the envi- 
rons of the Fort and seemed intended merely for the 
accommodation of the Garrisons, and I have reason to 
believe that even at this day, there are very few, if 
any, to the southward of the latitude 45°" — the present 
northern boundary of the State of New York — " ex- 
cept what has been made since the peace, by British 
subjects under the Grants of this Colony. I had the 
honor of transmitting to the Earle of Hillsborough a 
paper on this subject, drawn up by Council here, at 
the request of the reduced officers, to whom and the 
disbanded soldiers, a very considerable part of the 
country on the east side of Lake Champlain, hath been 
granted in obedience to His Majesty's royal proclama- 
tion. The proof of several material facts have in- 
fluenced my opinion are these stated, and to which I 
beg leave to refer your Lords." That the Centennial 
of the town is not properly a celebration of a French 
settlement is proved, it is believed, by the extract. 
But let it be stated, that the first attempt to settle 
Ticonderoga was made by the French engineer who 
built Fort Carillon, M. Michel Chartier de Lotbiniere, 
a man of scientific and literary acquirements. His 
attempt was unsuccessful. The town was destined to 
begin its civil life not through French but through 
English occupation. 



98 Centennial Address 

grants of land issued by george the third 

October 7, 1763, George the Third issued a procla- 
mation authorizing the Colonial Governors to issue 
Grants of lands on either side of Lake Champlain. 
Just one hundred years to-day, or on July 25, 1764, 
a worn subaltern officer who had expended fortune and 
strength in the Canadian campaigns had received at 
the Fort in the city of New York a Grant of two 
thousand acres of land in Ticonderoga. The name of 
that soldier was Lieut. John Stoughton. His tract, as 
has been stated, was the first land ever granted to an 
English Colonist in Ticonderoga. The first passage 
of lands from foreign, into colonial and private pos- 
session, when the conditions of the deed and the manner 
in which they were fulfilled are considered, may be 
regarded as the commencement of our civil history. 
The Grant was a valuable one. It was of the best 
lands in town. It included the outlet of Lake George, 
and thus all the sites of the water powers and future 
manufacturies. Its four corners may be roughly 
stated as the old Block house on Mount Defiance, the 
White Rocks near Mr. Gustavus Wicker's, Mr. E. 
Stones' fence, above the steamboat landing on Lake 
George, and Bugby's Point across the Lake. It lay 
thus in the general form of a trapezium wedged be- 
tween the mountains, the butt north and extending 
from the Lower Falls to Lake George on both sides of 
the outlet. The conditions of the Grant were important 



TiCONDEROGA 99 

and definite. No pine trees fit for masts of the growth 
" of twenty-four inches diameter and upwards at 
twelve inches from the earth " were to be cut down. 
All mines of gold and silver were reserved. Ten years 
the land was to be held without rent, but after that 
there was to be paid annually at Nev/ York on Lady 
Day, a rent of two shilling, six pence for every hun- 
dred acres of it. The deed was to be registered at the 
secretary's ofiice and docketed at the auditor's office 
in New York. But there were other more important 
conditions. The Grantee was obliged " to settle as 
many families on the tract of land as shall amount to 
one family for every thousand acres thereof," and " to 
plant and effectually cultivate at least three acres for 
every fifty acres of such of the treaty granted lands as 
are capable of cultivation." He was required to do 
this within three years of the date of the Grant. If 
any of these conditions were unfulfilled, the deed was 
annulled. 

In the spring of 1767, the last of three years given 
to him in which to settle his families, Lieut. Stoughton 
came to Ticonderoga in person. There were at least 
two females in the company, " Mrs. Stoughton and a 
young lady." They took up their dwelling at the 
Lake George landing. There was a Block house there. 
They brought with them sheep and cattle. Lieut. 
Stoughton was not alone in his enterprise. He had a 
partner, Samuel Deall — a merchant of New York of 
whom it is well to say at once that he was substantially 



100 Centennial Address 

the founder of trade, manufactures and agriculture in 
Ticonderoga. William Gilliland, a merchant of New 
York city, founded the first settlement at the mouth of 
the Boquet. Samuel Deall, a merchant of the same 
city, was the chief founder of the settlement of Ticon- 
deroga. Within a fortnight after Stoughton's patent 
had been granted two other Grants of land in Ticon- 
deroga were given to Richard Kellet and John Ken- 
nedy, also reduced British officers. Kellet's land 
embraced a broad flank of the plateau between Lake 
Champlain and the outlet of Lake George. Kennedy's 
lay on the equally rich land just back of this on the 
same plateau. I hold in my hand the parchment deeds 
granted to each of these officers, — interesting relics, 
browned, blackened, and mouldy with moisture, ink 
and time, and bearing the enormous pendent seal of 
the province of New York, stamped with the arms of 
Great Britain and figures of Aborigines kneeling to 
the King with furs and game, symbols of the early 
trade.* They bear date August 7, 1764. Stoughton's 
deed was probably in the same form though I have not 
been able to recover the original, but I found the 
apparently authenticated copy at the office of the 
Secretary of State at Albany, bearing date July 5, 
1764. Kennedy's land embraced perhaps two and a 
quarter square miles. It was of the best land in town 
for agricultural purposes. At his death the property 

* These Parchment deeds are now in the possession of the 
Ticonderoga Historical Society. 



TiCONDEROGA lOI 

came into the hands of " Henry Kennedy, Surgeon, 
the oldest brother of John Kennedy, gentlemen de- 
ceased." This brother sold it September 26, 1765, for 
one hundred and fifty pounds sterling to Abraham P. 
Lott and Peter Theobaldus Curtenius, " Merchants of 
the City of New York." Of these, Samuel Deall pur- 
chased it, December 10, 1767. He paid but one hun- 
dred and eighty pounds or about nine hundred dollars 
for the whole. Mr. Deall also owned a broad strip 
running up the land on the Wicker Brook. He had a 
patent, too, on the best land on the lower part of Trout 
Brook, embracing about a mile square. The lines of 
these and other early patents may be seen in Mr. 
French's map of Essex County published in 1858. 

Samuel Deall's mills were destroyed by a battalion 
of Burgoyne's army. Near the opening of the Revo- 
lution Samuel Deall died at his post of duty in New 
York and his family returned to England to remain 
during the war, leaving their property in the wilds of 
Ticonderoga to the ravages of armies and the dilapida- 
tions of time. Samuel Deall was a violent loyalist, 
very outspoken against the course of the American 
rebels, but to the aged man, with his fixed and cautious 
opinions, large property and otherwise noble aims, this 
can be pardoned. If every man, following him in 
Ticonderoga, had labored with his enthusiasm, sagacity 
and unselfish devotion to the public good, what would 
have been our commercial, social and moral advance- 
ment now? 



I02 Centennial Address 

SUBSEQUENT ATTACKS ON FORT TICONDEROGA 

The capture of the Fort by Ethan Allen May lo, 
1775, is so well known that I will not enlarge on it, 
except to say that the one hundred and twenty cannon 
taken by Ethan Allen at Ticonderoga were taken in 
winter over the Green Mountains and placed by George 
Washington on Dorchester Heights at Boston, and 
helped essentially in driving the British out of Boston. 

General Carleton attacked and defeated the American 
fleet on Lake Champlain under Arnold September 11, 
1775, and appears to have intended to attack Ticon- 
deroga but was repelled by the vigorous preparations 
made by General Gates and by the lateness of the 
season. 

A journal report by Surgeon James Thatcher, who 
was in the army at the Fort during this battle and the 
following winter and summer, describes the defenses 
and life in the barracks and speaks with enthusiasm 
of the scenery of Ticonderoga. 

The garrison at the Fort, though guarding an im- 
portant frontier, led an easy life, a merry life, a well- 
fed, happy life while Washington was retreating in 
gloom across the Jerseys, and while his troops had 
received courage for the American cause by the vic- 
tories at Trenton and at Princeton. 

Burgoyne named Mount Hope awd Mount Defiance. 
When his officers on the latter height witnessed the 
flight of the American general, St. Clair, up the Lake 



TiCONDEROGA I03 

and by land southward, England was justified in her 
hope of dividing the rebellious colonies by Burgoyne's 
march southward, meeting Clinton's advance from 
New York up the Hudson. 

The strategy was much like Sherman's march to 
the sea, by which we cut the rebellious slave Confed- 
eracy in two. It came near succeeding. Burgoyne had 
been ordered by his home government to go southward 
through Lake George. His success at Mount Defiance 
gave him such overwhelming confidence in his for- 
tune that he disregarded these orders and allowed him- 
self to be persuaded by the wily tory, Col. Skene of 
Skenesboro, now Whitehall, to cut a road through the 
marshes southward to Fort Edward. 

This work delayed him greatly and gave the Ameri- 
cans opportunity to rally an army at Saratoga which 
defeated him. This victory gave us the French 
Alliance, and that gave us our independence. 

Burgoyne was a pompous and vain man, but of 
much ability as a general, and his name cannot be 
omitted in the list of those whose deeds have made 
Ticonderoga historic ground. 

It is a curious coincidence that Burgoyne's engi- 
neers dragged cannon to the top of Mount Defiance 
on the night of July 4th, and that St. Clair evacuated 
the fort on the night of the 5th, and Burgoyne's army 
entered it on the morning of the 6th, the anniversary 
of Lord Howe's death in the Battle of Ticonderoga 
nineteen years before. 



I04 Centennial Address 

Washington, the first distinguished tourist on Lake 
George, visited Ticonderoga and Crown Point while 
his army was at Newburgh-on-the-Hudson, and made 
a keen, military inspection of these famous fortresses. 

Benjamin Franklin, in his 70th year, on a mission 
to our army in Canada passed through Lake George 
on April 20, 1776, in a flat-bottomed boat 36 feet 
long, 8 feet wide and i foot deep, with blankets ar- 
ranged for a sail and awnings. 

This bateau was placed on wheels and drawn, by 
six yoke of oxen on the old Portage road, across the 
land to Lake Champlain. 

In September, 1802, Timothy D wight, President of 
Yale College from 1795 to the time of his death in 
1817, came through Lake George in a boat which was 
built for the use and under the direction of General 
Schuyler. He says : " No vehicle could be lighter or 
more convenient. It was built in the form of a bateau ; 
was 30 feet in length and about 8 or 9 feet in breadth. 
Over the middle half a canopy of painted canvas, 
with curtains of the same material descending from 
it, sheltered passengers from the sun, wind and rain. 
This room was neatly floored and furnished with seats 
and other accommodations, perfectly fitted for ease and 
pleasure." 

President Dwight visited Lake Champlain and Fort 
Ticonderoga. He speaks of the abattis being four 
feet high when he saw the ruins. 



TiCONDEROGA I05 

In the war of 181 2, the British Commanders who 
attacked Plattsburgh by the land and by the sea 
and were so gloriously repelled there, announced that 
they intended to annex all northern New York as far 
southward as Ticonderoga. Our American Captain 
McDonough set his ships in order at the mouth of 
Plattsburgh Harbor and knelt on his ship's deck and 
commended his forces to the aid of the God of Battles. 

No fiercer conflict on the water is known to naval 
history. 

Not a mast on a ship on either side was left fit to 
carry sail. But this thunderbolt had been hurled at 
the whole lake region as far southward as Ticon- 
deroga. Plattsburgh caught it in her victorious right 
hand and returned it whence it came. 

ticonderoga's part in battle of plattsburgh 1814 

The action of Ticonderoga in the war of 1812 had 
its chief interest in its relation to the battle of Platts- 
burgh. General Izard had been stationed all the 
summer at that village, with sixteen or eighteen thou- 
sand men. He was ordered to Sacketts Harbor. 
General Provost with an army partly composed of 
Wellington's Veterans marched upon the place from 
Canada. His plan of the campaign it was well known, 
was to secure Crown Point and Ticonderoga while 
another army invaded New York or Connecticut from 
the south. The two forces hoped to mset at Albany. 
The purpose was to separate New England from the 



io6 Centennial Address 

rest of the Union. The Militia at Essex County were 
called out by General Mooers. The news of the call 
was received at Ticonderoga on Thursday preceding 
the first skirmish on the 26. of September at Beekman- 
town, a village a few miles north of Plattsburgh. By 
nine o'clock on the following Friday morning two 
companies were beginning to march. The companies 
were not full ; it is thought that Ticonderoga had about 
one hundred engaged in the battle, beside the vessel 
named after the town in the fleet. The officers, among 
the land volunteers, were Captains Beers Tomlinson 
and Silas Sagus. The former took the place 
of Captain Justice Bailey, who was disabled at the 
time. I have made an attempt to obtain the names 
of all the soldiers, but the list need not be rehearsed 
here. Prevost, retreating as soon as Commodore 
Downie had been defeated on the Lake by McDonough, 
not one of the volunteers of Ticonderoga under Mc- 
Comb was wounded. An interesting item of the his- 
tory of the town at the time, was the organization of 
a company of old men from fifty to sixty years of 
age under the name of Silver Greys. The company 
was extemporized on the morning that the volunteer 
militia left Ticonderoga and all the officers and some 
fifteen of the men were in the battle. 

TICONDEROGA IN THE CIVIL WAR 

But the theme which fills all our hearts remains yet 
to be touched upon. Ticonderoga, in the present war, 



TiCONDEROGA I07 

has believed her struggle to be for Freedom against 
Slavery, for Democracy against Aristocracy, and this 
not for the Union alone but for the Continent. In the 
Rebellion she has seen an attempt at the reduction of 
the greater portion of the laborers of the north to the 
condition of the poor whites of the south, the overthrow 
of republican institutions. Her zeal for the utter aboli- 
tion of the cause of the war has, like that of other 
towns, grown with events, but was high and strong, 
though not loudly uttered, at first. The vote of the 
town has been in Presidential elections steadily Whig 
or Republican for more than a quarter of a century. 
At a reception given on the Fort grounds to Company 
H of Crown Point, in which most of the Volunteers of 
Ticonderoga enlisted, and held as early as May, 1861, 
the most thorough determination to stand by the Union 
was taken by the speakers. " The best speech to be 
made to-day and for some time to come," was one 
sentence, " will not be from human but from iron lips." 
The controlling sentiment of the town has been a 
desire to support the Union, to respect the laws, and 
to overturn the cause of the war. A town of twenty- 
six hundred inhabitants, with a taxable property valued 
in 1863 at four hundred and ten thousand dollars, 
Ticonderoga in all, up to the present time has raised 
two hundred and fifty volunteers and voted forty-seven 
thousand, seven hundred and fifty dollars in money for 
the war. It is no more than just that it should be said 
that when the Draft Riots occurred in New York 



io8 Centennial Address 

there was not the slightest disturbance in Ticonderoga 
and, whatever any may have felt in their hearts, not 
more than six or ten misinformed or ignorant persons 
were known to be malcontents by their conversation. 

" I am drafted ; it is all right ; " one soMier was 
heard to say ; " it is a fair, straightforward business ; 
if I had not been some one else would have been; I 
am going." 

The town paid under the next draft nineteen thous- 
and six hundred dollars for bounty to thirty-nine 
volunteers. This is the largest sum it has yet raised. 
The volunteers came forward and were accepted by 
the surgeons. The soldiers of Ticonderoga were 
chiefly under Major Hammond. To the memory of 
those that have fallen in battle too much honor 
cannot be paid. In imitation of the custom of 
other towns, Ticonderoga should erect a monument 
to her fallen heroes to be inscribed with their names. 
It may not be improper here to urge that this be 
surely done and the memorial placed upon some of 
the historic grounds of this town. 

So ends the history of three hundred years. I have 
no comment to make on it, but to look backward and 
say to those who have preceded, Honor; to look 
forward, and say to the coming generation, Welcome 
and Benediction ; to look upward and say, Laus Deo ! 

The Plan of History, of which we are a part moves 
on. Solemn, eternal, without pause, is the progress 
of that infinite concourse of motives by which the 



TiCONDEROGA lOQ 

thread of our lives is woven into the universal web 
of Providence, at an infinite distance from the end, 
and also at an infinite distance from the beginning. 
The sublimity and solemnity of immortality are 
spoken by the lapse of a century. We who see this 
Centennial shall see the next one from the eternal 
spaces. We are profoundly moved as we look forward 
to those who are to come after us, and endeavor to 
measure their destiny and our own. The history of 
the town like all history proves that there is a Right 
and a Left. We profoundly believe that Paul was not 
a dupe, that the evidences of Christianity are decisive. 
The host of the coming generations we would take in 
our arms and place in God's arms, penetrating it with 
that Faith until the town is transformed into a radiant 
new creation for the service of truth. It is a solemn 
day. It is no time for trifling words. We shall be 
here one hundred years hence but our speech will not 
be that of mortals. We shall see those who shall come 
after us and who shall stand here on that day. We 
say to them in advance that we will turn to our graves 
with longing to beseech them to be less unwise, if they 
do not so act that their history may minister to the 
History of Redemption. 



LlbHMnT *^r ^wi^>--' " 




014 221 100 2 




